

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 


Chap^_Z.._^ Copyright No.-, 

Shelf i.C.iiS'Bu 
KL- 


UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 






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GEO. W1LLIAA\ CURTIS 


CHICAGO 


\V. B. CON KEY COMP 


PUBLISH F.RS 



' ' 

36068 

Ccwi^rcss 

Two Copies Received 

AUG 18 1900 


C»pyfigM •"'fJf 



SECOND COPY. 


Delivered to 

ORDER OWISION, 

AUG 27 190U 


Copyright, 1900, by W. B. Conkey Company. 


68728 


TO 


MRS. HENRY W. LONGFELLOW, 

IN MEMORY OF THE HAPPY HOURS AT 
OUR CASTLES IN SPAIN. 



1 


\ 






CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

I. Dinner-Time ii 

I 

II. My Chateaux 33 

III. Sea from Shore . 58 

IV. Titbottom’s Spectacles 83 

V. A Cruise in the Flying Dutchman 123 

VI. Family Portraits 154 

VII. Our Cousin the Curate 166 


5 



4 


I 


A WORD TO THE GENTLE READER. 


An old bookkeeper, who wears a white cra- 
vat and black trousers in the morning, who 
rarely goes to the opera, and never dines out, 
is clearly a person of no fashion and of no su- 
perior sources of information. His only jour- 
ney is from his house to his office ; his only sat- 
isfaction is in doing his duty; his only happi- 
ness is in his Prue and his children. 

What romance can such a life have? What 
stories can such a man tell? 

Yet I think, sometimes, when I look up from 
the parquet at the opera, and see Aurelia smil- 
ing in the boxes, and holding her court of love, 
and youth, and beauty, that the historians have 
not told of a fairer queen, nor the travelers 
seen devouter homage. And when I remember 
that it was in misty England that quaint old 
George Herbert sang of the — 

“Sweet dav so cool, so calm, so bright — 

The bridal of the earth and sky,’* 

I am sure that I see days as lovely in our clear- 
er air, and I do not believe that Italian sunsets 
have a more gorgeous purple or a softer gold. 

So, as the circle of my little life revolves, I 
console myself with believing, what I cannot 
help believing, that a man need not be a vaga- 
bond to enjoy the sweetest charm of travel, 
7 


8 


PREFACE. 


but that all countries and all times repeat 
themselves in his experience. This is an old 
philosophy, I am told, and much favored by 
those who have traveled; and I cannot but be 
glad that my faith has such a fine name and 
such competent witnesses. I am assured, how- 
ever, upon the other hand, that such a faith is 
only imagination. But, if that be true, imag- 
ifiation is as good as many voyages — and how 
much cheaper ! — a consideration which an old 
bookkeeper can never afford to forget. 

I have not found, in my experience, that 
travelers always bring back with them the sun- 
shine of Italy or the elegance of Greece. They 
tell us that there are such things, and that 
they have seen them ; but, perhaps, they saw 
them, as the apples in the garden of the Hes- 
perides were sometimes seen — over the wall. 
I prefer the fruit which I can buy in the mar- 
ket to that which a man tells me he saw in 
Sicily, but of which there is no flavor in his 
story. Others, like Moses Primrose, bring us 
a gross of such spectacles as we prefer not to 
see; so that I begin to suspect a man must 
have Italy and Greece in his heart and mind, if 
he would ever see them with his eyes. 

I know that this may be only a device of that 
compassionate imagination designed to comfort 
me, who shall never take but one other jour- 
ney than my daily beat. Yet there have been 
wise men who taught that all scenes are but 
pictures upon the mind; and if I can see them 
as I walk the street that leads to my office, or 
sit at the office window looking into the court, 


PREFACE. 


9 


or take a little trip down the bay or up the 
river, why are not my pictures as pleasant and 
as profitable as those which men travel for 
years, at great cost of time, and trouble, and 
money, to behold? 

For my part, I do not believe that any man 
can see softer skies than I see in Prue’s eyes; 
nor hear sweeter music than I hear in Prue’s 
voice ; nor find a more heaven-lighted temple 
that I know Prue’s mind to be. And when 
I wish to please myself with a lovely image of 
peace and contentment, I do not think of the 
plain of Sharon, nor of the valley of Enna, nor 
of Arcadia, nor of Claude’s pictures; but, feel- 
ing that the fairest fortune of my life is the 
right to be named with her, I whisper gently, 
to myself, with a smile — for it seems as if my 
very heart smiled within me, when I think of 
her — “Prue and I.” 


/ 







. ■*. 



PRUE AND I. 


DINNER-TIME. 

“Within this hour it will be dinner-time; 

I’ll view the manners of the town, 

Peruse the traders, gaze upon the buildings.’* 

— Comedy of Errors. 

In the warm afternoons of the early summer, 
it is my pleasure to stroll about Washington 
Square and along the Fifth Avenue, at the 
hour when the diners-out are hurrying to the 
tables of the wealthy and refined. I gaze with 
placid delight upon the cheerful expanse of 
white waistcoat that illumes those streets at 
that hour, and mark the variety of emotions 
that swell beneath all that purity. A man go- 
ing out to dine has a singular cheerfulness of 
aspect. Except for his gloves, which fit so 
well, and which he has carefully buttoned, that 
he may not make an awkward pause in the hall 
of his friend’s house, I am sure he would 
search his pocket for a cent to give the wan 
beggar at the corner. It is impossible just 
now, my dear woman ; but God bless you ! 

It is pleasant to consider that simple suit of 
black. If my man be young and only lately 
cognizant of the rigors of the social law, he is 
a little nervous at being seen in his dress suit 
— body coat and black trousers — before sunset. 

11 


12 


PRUE AND I. 


For in the last days of May the light lingers 
long over the freshly leaved trees in the 
Square, and lies warm along the Avenue. All 
winter the sun has not been permitted to see 
dresscoats. They come out only with the stars, 
and fade with ghosts, before the dawn. Ex- 
cept, haply, they be brought homeward before 
breakfast in an early twilight of hackney-coach. 
Now, in the budding and bursting summer, 
the sun takes his revenge, and looks aslant 
over the treetops and the chimneys upon the 
most unimpeachable garments. A cat may 
look upon a king. 

I know my man at a distance. If I am chat- 
ting with the nursery maids around the foun- 
tain, I see him upon the broad walk of Wash- 
ington Square, and detect him by the freshness 
of his movement, his springy gait. Then the 
white waistcoat flashes in the sun. 

“Go on, happy youth,” I exclaim aloud, to 
the great alarm of the nursery maids, who sup- 
pose me tobe an innocent insane person suffered 
to go at large, unattended — “go on, and be 
happy with fellow-waistcoats over fragrant 
wines. ” 

It is hard to describe the pleasure in this 
amiable spectacle of a man going out to dine. 
I, who am a quiet family man, and take a 
quiet family cut at four o’clock; or, when I 
am detained downtown by a false quantity in 
my figures, .who run into Delmonico’s and seek 
comfort in a cutlet, am rarely invited to din- 
ner, and have few white waistcoats. Indeed, 
my dear Prue tells me that I have but one in 


PRUE AND 1. 


13 


the world, and I often want to confront my 
eager young friends as they bound along, and 
ask abruptly, “What do you think of a man 
whom one white waistcoat suffices?” 

By the time I have eaten my modest repast, 
it is the hour for the diners-out to appear. If 
the day is unusually soft and sunny, I hurry 
my simple meal a little, that I may not lose 
any of my favorite spectacle. Then I saunter 
out. If you met me you would see that I am 
also clad in black. But black is my natural 
color, so that it begets no false theories con- 
cerning my intentions. Nobody, meeting me 
in full black, supposes that I am going to dine 
out. That somber hue is professional with me. 
It belongs to bookkeepers as to clergymen, 
physicians, and undertakers. We wear it be- 
cause we follow solemn callings. Saving men’s 
bodies and souls, or keeping the machinery of 
business well wound, are such sad professions 
that it is becoming to drape dolefully those 
who adopt them. 

I wear a white cravat, too, but nobody sup- 
poses that it is in any danger of being stained 
by Lafitte. It is a limp cravat with a craven 
tie. It has none of the dazzling dash of the 
white that my young friends sport, or, I should 
say, sported ; for the white cravat is now aban- 
doned to the somber professions of which I 
spoke. My young friends suspect that the 
flunkeys of the British nobleman wear such 
ties, and they have, therefore, discarded them. 
I am sorry to remark, also, an uneasiness, if 
not downright skepticism, about the white 


14 


PRUE AND I. 


waistcoat. Will it extend to shirts, I ask my- 
self with sorrow. 

But there is something pleasanter to contem- 
plate during these quiet strolls of mine, than 
the men who are going to dine out, and that is, 
the women. They roll in carriages to the 
happy houses which they shall honor, and I 
strain my eyes in at the carriage window to 
see their cheerful faces as they pass. I have 
already dined ; upon beef and cabbage, prob- 
ably, if it is boiled day. I am not expected at 
the table to which Aurelia is hastening, yet no 
guest there shall enjoy more than I enjoy — nor 
so much, if he considers the meats the best 
part of the dinner. The beauty of the beauti- 
ful Aurelia I see and worship as she drives by. 
The vision of many beautiful Aurelias driving 
to dinner is the mirage of that pleasant journey 
of mine along the avenue. I do not envy the 
Persian poets, on those afternoons, nor long to 
be an Arabian traveler. For I can walk that 
street, finer than any of which the Ispahan 
architects dreamed ; and I can see sultanas as 
splendid as the enthusiastic and exaggerating 
Orientals describe. 

But not only do I see and enjoy Aurelia’s 
beauty. I delight in her exquisite attire. In 
these warm days she does not wear so much as 
the lightest shawl. She is clad only in spring 
sunshine. It glitters in the soft darkness of 
her hair. It touches the diamonds, the opals, 
the pearls, that cling to her arms, and neck, 
and fingers. They flash back again, and the 
gorgeous silks glisten, and the light laces flut- 


PRUE AND I. 


15 


ter, until the stately Aurelia seems to me, in 
tremulous radiance, swimming by. 

I doubt whether you who are to have the in- 
expressible pleasure of dining with her, and 
even of sitting by her side, will enjoy more 
than I. For my pleasure is inexpressible, also. 
And it is in this greater than yours, that I see 
all the beautiful ones who are to dine at vari- 
ous tables, while you only see your own circle, 
although that, I will not deny, is the most 
desirable of all. 

Besides, although my person is not present 
at your dinner, my fancy is. I see Aurelia’s 
carriage stop, and behold white-gloved ser- 
vants opening wide doors. There is a brief 
glimpse of magnificence for the dull eyes of 
the loiterers outside; then the door closes. 
But my fancy went in with Aurelia. With 
her, it looks at the vast mirror, and surveys 
her form at length in the Psyche-glass. It 
gives the final shake to the skirt, the last flirt 
to the embroidered handkerchief, carefully 
held, and adjusts the bouquet, complete as a 
tropic nestling in orange leaves. It descends 
with her, and marks the faint blush upon her 
cheek at the thought of her exceeding beauty ; 
the consciousness of the most beautiful 
woman, that the most beautiful woman is en- 
tering the room. There is the momentary 
hush, the subdued greeting, the quick glance 
of the Aurelias who have arrived earlier, and 
who perceive in a moment the hopeless perfec- 
tion of that attire; the courtly gaze of gentle- 
men who feel the serenity of that beauty. All 


16 


PRUE AND I. 


this my fancy surveys; my fancy, Aurelia’s 
invisible cavalier. 

You approach with hat in hand and the 
thumb of your left hand in your waistcoat 
pocket. You are polished and cool, and have 
an irreproachable repose of manner. There 
are no improper wrinkles in your cravat ; your 
shirt-bosom does not bulge; the trousers are 
accurate about your admirable boot. But 
you look very stiff and brittle. You are a lit- 
tle bullied by your unexceptional shirt-collar, 
which interdicts perfect freedom of movement 
in your head. You are elegant, undoubtedly, 
but it seems as if you might break and fall to 
pieces, like a porcelain vase, if you were 
roughly shaken. 

Now, here, I have the advantage of you. 
My fancy quietly surveying the scene, is sub- 
ject to none of these embarrassments. My 
fancy will not utter commonplaces. That will 
not say to the superb lady, who stands with 
her flowers, incarnate May, “What a beautiful 
day. Miss Aurelia.” That will not feel con- 
strained to say something, when it has nothing 
to say ; nor will it be obliged to smother all 
the pleasant things that occur, because they 
would be too flattering to express. My fancy 
perpetually murmurs in Aurelia’s ear, “Those 
flowers would not be fair in your hand, if 
yourself were not fairer. That diamond neck- 
lace would be gaudy, if your eyes were not 
brighter. That queenly movement would be 
awkward, if your soul were not queenlier. ” 

You could not say such things to Aurelia, 


PRUE AND I. 


17 


although, if you are worthy to dine at her 
side, they are the very things you are longing 
to say. What insufferable stuff you are talk- 
ing about the weather, and the opera, and 
Alboni’s delicious voice, and Newport, and 
Saratoga! They are all very pleasant sub- 
jects, but do you suppose Ixion talked Thes- 
salian politics when he was admitted to dine 
with Juno? 

1 almost begin to pity 3 ^ou, and to believe 
that a scarcity of white waistcoats is true wis- 
dom. For now dinner is announced, and you, 
O rare felicity, are to hand down Aurelia. 
But you run the risk of tumbling her expansive 
skirt, and you have to drop your hat upon a 
chance chair, and wonder, en passa7it, who will 
wear it home, which is annoying. My fancy 
runs no such risk ; is not at all solicitous about 
its hat, and glides by the side of Aurelia, 
stately as she. There! you stumble on the 
chair, and are vexed at your ov/n awkward- 
ness, and are sure you saw the ghost of a 
smile glimmer along that superb face at your 
side. My fancy doesn’t tumble downstairs, 
and what kind of looks it sees upon Aurelia’s 
face are its own secret. 

Is it any better, now you are seated at table? 
Your companion eats little because she wishes 

de. You eat little because you think it is 
elegant to do so. It is a shabby, second-hand 
elegance, like your brittle behavior. It is just 
as foolish for you to play with the meats, when 
you ought to satisfy your healthy appetite 
generously, as it is for you, in the drawing 

2 Prue and I 


18 


PRUE AND I. 


room, to affect that cool indifference when you 
have real and noble interests. 

I grant you that fine manners, if you please, 
are a fine art. But is not monotony the de- 
struction of art? Your manners, O happy 
Ixion, banqueting with Juno, are Egyptian. 
They have no perspective, no variety. They 
have no color, no shading. They are all on a 
dead level; they are flat. Now, for you are a 
man of sense, you are conscious that those 
wonderful eyes of Aurelia see straight through 
all this network of elegant manners in which 
you have entangled yourself, and that con- 
sciousness is uncomfortable to you. It is 
another trick in the game for me, because 
those eyes do not pry into my fancy. How 
can they, since Aurelia does not know of my 
existence? 

Unless, indeed, she should remember the 
first time I saw her. It was only last year, in 
May. I had dined, somewhat hastily, in con- 
sideration of the fine day, and of my confidence 
that many would be wending dinnerwards 
that afternoon. I saw my Prue comfortably 
engaged in seating the trousers of Adoniram, 
our eldest boy — an economical care to which 
my darling Prue is not unequal, even in these 
days and in this town — and then hurried 
toward the avenue. It is never much thronged 
at that hour. The moment is sacred to din- 
ner. As I paused at the corner of Twelfth 
Street, by the church, you remember, I saw 
an apple-woman, from whose stores I deter- 
mined to finish tny dessert, which had been 


PRUE AND I. 


19 


imperfect at home. But, mindful of merito- 
rious and economical Prue, I was not the man 
to pay exorbitant prices for apples, and while 
still haggling with the wrinkled Eve who had 
tempted me, I became suddenly aware of a 
carriage approaching, and, indeed, already 
close by. I raised my eyes, still munching an 
apple which I held in one hand, while the 
other grasped my walking stick (true to my 
instincts of dinner guests, as young women to 
a passing wedding or old ones to a funeral) 
and beheld Aurelia! 

Old in this kind of observation as I am, there 
was something so graciously alluring in the 
look that she cast upon me, as unconsciously, 
indeed, as she would have cast it upon the 
church, that, fumbling hastily for my specta- 
cles to enjoy the boon more fully, I thought- 
lessly advanced upon the apple-stand, and, in 
some indescribable manner, tripping, down'we 
all fell into the street, old woman, apples, bas- 
kets, stand, and I, in promiscuous confusion. 
As I struggled there, somewhat bev/ildered, 
yet sufficiently self-possessed to look after the 
carriage, I beheld that beautiful woman look- 
ing at us through the back window (you could 
not have done it ; the integrity of your shirt- 
collar would have interfered), and smiling 
pleasantly, so that her going around the cor- 
ner was like a gentle sunset, so seemed she to 
disappear in her own smiling; or — if you 
choose, in view of the apple difficulties — like 
a rainbow after a storm. 

If the beautiful Aurelia recalls that event, 


20 


PRUE AND I. 


she may know of my existence ; not otherwise. 
And even then she knows me only as a 
funny old gentleman, who, in his eagerness to 
look at her, tumbled over an apple-woman. 

My fancy from that moment followed her. 
How grateful I was to the wrinkled Eve’s ex- 
tortion, and to the untoward tumble, since it 
procured me the sight of that smile. I took 
my sweet revenge from that. For I knew 
that the beautiful Aurelia entered the house 
of her host with beaming eyes, and my fancy 
heard her sparkling story. You consider your- 
self happy because you are sitting by her and 
helping her to a lady-finger, or a macaroon, 
for which she smiles. But I was her theme for 
ten mortal minutes. She was my bard, my 
blithe historian. She was the Homer of my 
luckless Trojan fall. She set my mishap to 
music, in telling it. Think what it is to have 
inspired Urania; to have called a brighter 
beam into the eyes of Miranda, and do not 
think so much of passing Aurelia the mottoes, 
my dear young friend. 

There was the advantage of not going to 
that dinner. Had I been invited, as you were, 
I should have pestered Prue about the buttons 
on my white waistcoat, instead of leaving her 
placidly piercing adolescent trousers. She 
would have been flustered, fearful of being too 
late, of tumbling the garment, of soiling it, 
fearful of offending me in some way (admirable 
woman!), I, in my natural impatience, might 
have let drop a thoughtless word, which w’ould 


PRUE AND I. 


21 


have been a pang in her heart and a tear in 
her eye, for weeks afterward. 

As I walked nervously up the avenue (for 
I am unaccustomed to prandial recreations), I 
should not have had that solacing image of 
quiet Prue, and the trousers, as the background 
in the pictures of the gay figures I passed, 
making each, by contrast, fairer. I should 
have been wondering what to say and do at 
the dinner. I should surely have been very 
warm, and yet not have enjoyed the rich, wan- 
ing sunlight. Need I tell you that I should 
not have stopped for apples, but instead of 
economically tumbling into the street with 
apples and apple-women, whereby I merely 
rent my trousers across the knee, in a manner 
that Prue can readily, and at little cost, re- 
pair, I should, beyond peradventure, have split 
a new dollar-pair of gloves in the effort of 
straining my large hands into them, which 
would, also, have caused me additional redness 
in the face, and renewed fluttering. 

Above all, I should not have seen Aurelia 
passing in her carriage, nor would she have 
smiled at me, nor charmed my memory with 
her radiance, nor the circle at dinner with the 
sparkling Iliad of my woes. Then at the 
table, I should not have sat by her. You 
would have had that pleasure ; I should have 
led out the maiden aunt from the country, had 
have talked poultry, when I talked at all. 
Aurelia would not have remarked me. After- 
wards, in describing the dinner to her virtuous 


22 


PRUE AND I. 


parents, she would have concluded, “and one 
old gentleman, whom I didn’t know.” 

No, my polished friend, whose elegant re- 
pose of manner I yet greatly commend, I am 
content, if you are. How much better it was 
that I was not invited to that dinner, but was 
permitted, by a kind fate, to furnish a subject 
for Aurelia’s wit. 

There is one other advantage in sending 
your fancy to dinner, instead of going yourself. 
It is, that then the occasion remains wholly 
fair in your memory. You, who devote your- 
self to dining out, and who are to be daily 
seen affably sitting down to such feasts, as I 
know mainly by hearsay — by the report of 
waiters, guests, and others who were present 
— you cannot escape the little things that spoil 
the picture, and which the fancy does not see. 

For instance, in handling you the potage a la 
Bisque^ at the very commencement of this din- 
ner to-day, John, the waiter, who never did 
such a thing before, did this time suffer the 
plate to tip, so that a little of that rare soup 
dripped into your lap — just enough to spoil 
those trousers, which is nothing to you, be- 
cause you can buy a great many more trousers, 
but which little event is inharmonious with the 
fine porcelain dinner service, with the frag- 
rant wines, the glittering glass, the beautiful 
guests, and the mood of mind suggested by 
all of these. There is, in fact, if you will par- 
don a free use of the vernacular, there is a 
grease spot upon your remembrance of this din- 
ner. 


PRUE AND I. 


23 


Or, in the same way, and with the same 
kind of mental result, you can easily imagine 
the meats a little tough ; a suspicion of smoke 
somewhere in the sauces; too much pepper, 
perhaps, or too little salt; or there might be 
the graver dissonance of claret not properly 
attempered, or a choice Rhenish below the 
average mark, or the spilling of some of that 
Arethusa Madeira, marvelous for its innumer- 
able circumnavigations of the globe, and for 
being as dry as the conversation of the host. 
These things are not up to the high level of 
the dinner; for wherever Aurelia dines, all 
accessories should be as perfect in their kind 
as she, the principal, is in hers. 

That reminds me of a possible dissonance 
worse than all. Suppose that soup had trickled 
down the unimaginable berthe of Aurelia’s dress 
(since it might have done so), instead of wast- 
ing itself upon your trousers! Could even the 
irreproachable elegance of your manners have 
contemplated, unmoved, a grease spot upon 
your remembrance of the peerless Aurelia? 

You smile, of course, and remind me that 
that lady’s manners are so perfect that, if she 
drank poison, she would wipe her mouth after 
it as gracefully as ever. How much more 
then, you say, in the case of such a slight con- 
tretemps as spotting her dress, would she 
appear totally unmoved. 

So she would, undoubtedly. She would be, 
and look, as pure as ever; but, my young 
friend, her dress would not. Once I dropped 
a pickled oyster in the lap of my Prue, who 


24 


PRUE AND I. 


wore, on the occasion, her sea-green silk gown. 
I did not love my Prue the less ; bnt there cer- 
tainly was a very unhandsome spot upon her 
dress. And although I know my Prue to be 
spotless, yet, whenever I recall that day, I see 
her in a spotted gown, and I would prefer never 
to have been oWiged to think of her in such a 
garment. 

Can you not make the application to the 
case, very likely to happen, of some disfigure- 
ment of that exquisite toilette of Aurelia’s? 
In going downstairs, for instance, why should 
not heavy old Mr. Carbuncle, who is coming 
close behind with Mrs. Peony, both very eager 
for dinner, tread upon the hem of that garment 
which my lips would grow pale to kiss? The 
august Aurelia, yielding to natural laws, would 
be drawn suddenly backward a very undignified 
movement — and the dress would be dilapi- 
dated. There w’ould be apologies, and smiles, 
and forgiveness, and pinning up the pieces, 
nor would there be the faintest feeling of awk- 
wardness or vexation in Aurelia’s mind. But 
to you, looking on, and, beneath all that pure 
show of waistcoat, cursing old Carbuncle’s 
carelessness, this tearing of dresses and repair 
of the toilette is by no means a poetic and 
cheerful spectacle. Nay, the very impatience 
that it produces in your mind jars upon the 
harmony of the moment. 

You will respond, with proper scorn, that you 
are not so absurdly fastidious as to heed the 
little necessary drawbacks of social meetings, 
and that you have not much regard for “the 


PRUE AND I. 


25 


harmony of the occasion” (which phrase I fear 
you will repeat in a sneering tone). You will 
do very right in saying this; and it is a remark 
to which I shall give all the hospitality of my 
mind, and I do so because I heartily coincide 
in it. I hold a man to be very foolish who 
wull not eat a good dinner because the table- 
cloth is not clean, or who cavils at the spots 
upon the sun. But still a man who does not 
apply his eye to a telescope, or some kind of 
prepared medium, does not see those spots, 
while he has just as much light and heat as he 
who does. 

So it is with me. I walk in the avenue, and 
eat all the delightful dinners, without seeing 
the spots upon the tablecloth, and behold all 
the beautiful Aurelias without swearing at old 
Carbuncle. I am the guest who, for the small 
price of invisibility, drinks only the best 
wines, and talks only to the most agreeable 
people. That is something, I can tell you, for 
you might be asked to lead out old Mrs. Peony. 
My fancy slips in between you and Aurelia, 
sit you never so closely together. It not only 
hears what she says, but it perceives what she 
thinks and feels. It lies like a bee in her 
flowery thoughts, sucking all their honey. If 
there are unhandsome or unfeeling guests at 
table, it will not see them. It knows only the 
good and fair. As I stroll in the fading light 
and observe the stately houses, my fancy be- 
lieves the host equal to his house, and the 
courtesy of his wife more agreeable than her 
conservatory. 


26 


PRUE AND I. 


It will not believe that the pictures on the 
wall and the statues in the corners shame the 
guests. It will not allow that they are less 
than noble. It hears them speak gently of 
error, and warmly of worth. It knows that 
they commend heroism and devotion, and 
reprobate insincerity. My fancy is convinced 
that the guests are not only feasted upon the 
choicest fruits of every land and season, but 
are refreshed by a consciousness of greater 
loveliness and grace in human character. 

Now you, who actually go to the dinner, 
may not entirely agree with the view my fancy 
takes of that entertainment. Is it not, there- 
fore, rather your loss? Or, to put it in another 
way, ought I to envy you the discovery that 
the guests are shamed by the statues and pic- 
tures —yes, and by the spoons and forks also, 
if they should chance neither to be so genuine 
nor so useful as those instruments? And, 
worse than this, when your fancy wishes to 
enjoy the picture which mine forms of that 
feast, it cannot do so, because you have fool- 
ishly interpolated the fact between the dinner 
and your fancy. 

Of course, by this time it is late twilight, and 
the spectacle I enjoyed is almost over. But 
not quite, for as I return slowly along the 
streets, the windows are open, and only a thin 
haze of lace or muslin separates me from the 
Paradise within. 

I see the graceful cluster of girls hovering 
over the piano, and the quiet groups of the 
elders in easy chairs, around little tables. 1 


PRUE AND I. 


27 


cannot hear what is said, nor plainly see the 
faces. But some hoyden evening wind, more 
daring than I, abruptly parts the cloud to look 
in, and out comes a gush of light, music and 
fragrance, so that I shrink away into the dark, 
that I may not seem, even by chance, to have 
invaded that privacy. 

Suddenly there is singing. It is Aurelia, 
who does not cope with the Italian prima 
donna, nor sing indifferently to-night, w’hat 
was sung superbly last evening at the opera. 
She has a strange, low, sweet voice, as if she 
only sang in the twilight. It is the ballad of 
“Allan Percy” that she sings. There is no 
dainty applause of kid gloves, when it is ended, 
but silence follows the singing, like a tear. 

Then you, my young friend, ascend into the 
drawing-room, and, after a little graceful gos- 
sip, retire: or you wait, possibly, to hand 
Aurelia into her carriage, and to arrange a 
waltz for to-morrow evening. She smiles, you 
bow, and it is over. But it is not yet over 
with me. My fancy still follows her, and, like 
a prophetic dream, rehearses her destiny. 
For, as the carriage rolls away into the dark- 
ne'ss and I return homeward, how can my 
fancy help rolling away also, into the dim 
future, watching her go down the years? 

Upon my way home I see her in a thousand 
new situations. My fancy says to me, “The 
beauty of this beautiful woman is heaven’s 
stamp upon virtue. She will be equal to every 
chance that shall befall her, and she is so radi- 
ant and charming in the circle of prosperity, 


28 


PRUE AND I. 


only because she has that irresistible simplicity 
and fidelity of character, which can also pluck 
the sting from adversity. Do you not see, you 
wan old bookkeeper in faded cravat, that in a 
poor man’s house this superb Aurelia would 
be more stately than sculpture, more beautiful 
than painting, and more graceful than the 
famous vases. Would her husband regret the 
opera if she sang ‘Allan Percy’ to him in the 
twilight? Would he not feel richer than the 
Poets, when his eyes rose from their jeweled 
pages, to fall again dazzled by the splendor of 
his wife’s beauty?” 

At this point in my reflections I sometimes 
run, rather violently, against a lamp post, and 
then proceed along the street more sedately. 

It is yet early when I reach home, where 
my Prue awaits me. The children are asleep, 
and the trousers mended. The admirable 
woman is patient of my idiosyncracies, and 
asks me if I have had a pleasant walk, and if 
there were many fine dinners to-day, as if I 
had been expected at a dozen tables. She 
even asks me if I have seen the beautiful Aurelia 
(for there is always some Aurelia), and inquires 
what dress she wore. I respond, and dilate 
upon what I have seen. Prue listens, as the 
children listen to her fairy tales. We discuss 
the little stories that penetrate our retirement, 
of the great people who actually dine out. 
Prue, with fine womanly instinct, declares it is 
a shame that Aurelia should smile for a 

moment upon , yes, even upon you, my 

friend of the irreproachable manners! 


PRUE AND I 


29 


“I know him,” says my simple Prue; “I 
have watched his cold courtesy, his insincere 
devotion. I have seen him acting in the boxes 
at the opera, much more adroitly than the 
singers upon the stage. I have read his deter- 
mination to marry Aurelia; and I shall not be 
surprised,” concludes my tender wife, sadly, 
“if he wins her at last, by tiring her out, or, 
by secluding her by his constant devotion from 
the homage of other men, convinces her that 
she had better marry him, since it is so dismal 
to live on unmarried.” 

And so, my friend, at the moment when the 
bouquet you ordered is arriving at Aurelia’s 
house, and she is sitting before the glass while 
her maid arranges the last flower in her hair, 
my darling Prue, whom you will never hear of, 
is shedding warm tears over your probable 
union, and I am sitting by, adjusting my 
cravat and incontinently clearing my throat. 

It is rather a ridiculous business, I allow; 
yet you will smile at it tenderly, rather than 
scornfully, if you remember that it shows how 
closely linked we human creatures are, with- 
out knowing it, and that more hearts than we 
dream of enjoy our happiness and share our 
sorrow. 

Thus, I dine at great tables uninvited, and, 
unknown, converse with the famous beauties. 
If Aurelia is at last engaged (but who is 
worthy?) she will, with even greater care, 
arrange that wondrous toilette, will teach 
that lace to fall more alluring, those gems a 
sweeter light. But even then, as she rolls to 


30 


PRUE AND I. 


dinner in her carriage, glad that she is fair, not 
for her own sake nor for the world’s, but for 
that of a single youth (who, I hope, has not 
been smoking at the club all the morning), I, 
sauntering upon the sidewalk, see her pass, I 
pay homage to her beauty, and her lover can 
do no more ; and if, perchance, my garments — 
which must seem quaint to her, with their shin- 
ing knees and carefully brushed elbows; my 
white cravat, careless, yet prim ; my meditative 
movement, as I put my stick under my arm to 
pare an apple, and, not I hope, this time to fall 
into the street — should remind her, in her 
spring of youth, and beauty, and love, that 
there are age, and care, and poverty, also; 
then, perhaps, the good fortune of the meet- 
ing is not wholly mine. 

For, O beautiful Aurelia, two of these 
things, at least, must come even to you. There 
will be a time when you will no longer go out 
to dinner, or only very quietly, in the family. 
I shall be gone then ; but other old bookkeep- 
ers in white cravats will inherit my tastes, and 
saunter, on summer afternoons, to see what I 
loved to see. 

They will not pause, I fear, in buying 
apples, to look at the old lady in venerable 
cap, who is rolling by in the carriage. They 
will worship another Aurelia. You will not 
wear diamonds or opals any more, only one 
pearl upon your blue-veined finger — your 
engagement ring. Grave clergymen and anti- 
quated beaux will hand you down to dinner, 
and the group of polished youth, who gather 


PRUE AND I. 


31 


around the yet unborn Aurelia of that day, 
will look at you, sitting quietly upon the sofa, 
and say, softly, “She must have been very 
handsome in her time. “ 

All this must be : for consider how few years 
since it was your grandmother who was the 
belle, by whose side the handsome young men 
longed to sit and pass expressive mottoes. 
Your grandmother was the Aurelia of a half- 
century ago, although you cannot fancy her 
young. She is indissolubly associated in your 
mind with caps and dark dresses. You can 
believe Mary Queen of Scots, or Nell Gwyn, of 
Cleopatra, to have been young and blooming, 
although they belong to old and dead centur- 
ies, but not your grandmother. Think of those 
who shall believe the same of you — you, who 
to-day are the very flower of youth. 

Might I plead with you, Aurelia — I, who 
would be too happy to receive one of those 
graciously beaming bows that I see you bestow 
upon young men, in passing — I would ask you 
to bear that thought with you, always, not to 
sadden your sunny smile, but to give it a more 
subtle grace. Wear in your summer garland 
this little leaf of rue. It v/ill not be the skull 
at the feast, it will rather be the tender 
thoughtfulness in the face of the young 
Madonna. 

For the years pass like summer clouds, 
Aurelia, and the children of yesterday are the 
wives and mothers of to-day. Even I do 
sometimes discover the mild eyes of my Prue 
fixed pensively upon my face, as if searching 


32 


PRUE AND I. 


for the bloom which she remembers there in 
the days, long ago, when we were young. 
She will never see it there again, any more 
than the flowers she held in her hand, in our 
old spring rambles. Yet the tear that slowly 
gathers as she gazes, is not grief that the bloom 
has faded from my cheek, but the sweet con- 
sciousness that it can never fade from my 
heart; and as her eyes fall upon her work 
again, or the children climb her lap to hear 
the old fairy tales they already know by heart, 
my wife Prue is dearer to me than the sweet- 
heart of those days long ago. 


PRUE AND I. 


33 


MY CHATEAUX. 

**In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 
A stately pleasure-dome decree. ’ ’ 

— Coleridge. 

I am the owner of great estates. Many of 
them lie in the West; but the greater part are 
in Spain. You may see my western posses- 
sions any evening at sunset when their spires 
and battlements flash against the horizon. 

It gives me a feeling of pardonable import- 
ance, as a proprietor, that they are visible, to 
my eyes at least, from any part of the world in 
which I chance to be. In my long voyage 
around the Cape of Good Hope to India (the 
only voyage I ever made, when I was a boy 
and a supercargo), if I fell homesick or sank 
into a reverie of all the pleasant homes I had 
left behind, I had but to wait until sunset, and 
then looking towards the West, I beheld my 
clustering pinnacles and towers brightly bur- 
nished as if to salute and welcome me. 

So, in the city, if I get vexed and wearied, 
and cannot find my wonted solace in sallying 
forth at dinner-time to contemplate the gay 
world of youth and beauty hurrying to the con- 
gress of fashion — or if I observe that years are 
deepening their tracks around the eyes of my 
wife, Prue, I go quietly up to the housetop, 

8 Prue and 1 


34 


PRUE AND I. 


toward evening, and refresh myself with a dis- 
tant prospect of my estates. It is as dear to me 
as that of Eton to the poet Gray; and, if I 
sometimes wonder at such moments whether I 
shall find those realms as fair as they appear, I 
am suddenly reminded that the night air may 
be noxious, and descending, I enter the little 
parlor where Prue sits stitching, and surprise 
that precious woman by exclaiming with the 
poet’s pensive enthusiasm: 

* 'Thought would destroy their Paradise, 

No more ; where ignorance is bliss, 

*Tis folly to be wise.” 

Columbus, also, had possessions in the West; 
and as I read aloud the romantic story of his 
life, my voice quivers when I come to the point 
in which it is related that sweet odors of the 
land mingled with the sea-air, as the admiral’s 
fleet approached the shores ; that tropical birds 
flew out and fluttered around the ships, glitter- 
ing in the sun, the gorgeous promises of the 
new country; that boughs, perhaps with blos- 
soms not all decayed, floated out to welcome 
the strange wood from which the craft were 
hollowed. Then I cannot restrain myself. I 
think of the gorgeous visions I have seen 
before I have even undertaken the journey to 
the West, and I cry aloud to Prue: 

“What sunbright birds, and gorgeous blos- 
soms, and celestial odors will float out to us, my 
Prue, as we approach our western possessions!” 

The placid Prue raises her eyes to mine with 
a reproof so delicate that it could not be 


PRUE AND 1. 


35 


t-’usted to words; and, after a moment, she 
resumes her knitting and I proceed. 

These are my western estates, but my finest 
castles are in Spain. It is a country famously 
romantic, and my castles are all of perfect 
proportions, and appropriately set in the most 
picturesque situations. I have never been to 
Spain myself, but I have naturally conversed 
much with travelers to that country; although, 
I must allow, without deriving from them much 
substantial information about my property 
there. The wisest of them told me that there 
were more holders of real estate in Spain than 
in an)^ other region he had ever heard of, and 
they are all great proprietors. Every one of 
them possesses a multitude of the stateliest 
castles. From conversation with them you 
would easily gather that each one considers his 
own castles much the largest and in the love- 
liest positions. And, after I had heard this 
said, I verified it, by discovering that all my 
immediate neighbors in the city were great 
Spanish proprietors. 

One day as I raised my head from entering 
some long and tedious accounts in my books, 
and began to reflect that the quarter was expir- 
ing, and that I must begin to prepare the 
balance sheet, I . observed my subordinate, in 
office but not in years (for poor old Titbottom 
will never see sixty again!), leanin^^ on his 
hand, and much abstracted. 

“Are you not well, Titbottom?” asked I. 

“Perfectly, but I was just building a castle 
in Spain, ” said he. 


36 


PRUE AND I. 


I looked at his rusty coat, his faded hands 
his sad eye, and white hair, for a moment, in 
great surprise, and then inquired. 

“Is it possible that you own property there 
too?” 

He shook his head silently; and still leaning 
on his hand, with an expression in his eye, as 
if he were looking upon the most fertile estate 
of Andalusia, he went on making his plans; 
laying out his gardens, I suppose, building 
terraces for the vines, determining a library 
with a southern exposure, and resolving which 
should be the tapestried chamber. 

“What a singular whim,” thought I, as I 
watched Titbottom and filled up a check for 
four hundred dollars, my quarterly salary, 
“that a man who owns castles in Spain should 
be deputy bookkeeper at nine hundred dollars 
a year!” 

When I went home I ate my dinner silently, 
and afterward sat for a long time upon the roof 
of the house, looking at my western property, 
and thinking of Titbottom. 

It is remarkable that none of the proprietors 
have ever been to Spain to take possession and 
report to the rest of us the state of our prop- 
erty there. I, of course, cannot go, I am too 
much engaged. So is Titbottom. And I find 
it is the case with all the proprietors. We 
have so much to detain us at home that we 
cannot get away. But it is always so with rich 
men. Prue sighed once as she sat at the 
window and saw Bourne, the millionaire, the 
president of innumerable companies, and 


PRUE AND I. 


37 


manager and director of all the charitable soci- 
eties in town, going by with wrinkled brow and 
hurried step. I asked her why she sighed. 

“Because I was remembering that my 
mother used to tell me not to desire great 
riches, for they occasioned great cares,” said 
she. 

“They do indeed,” answered I, with empha- 
sis, remembering Titbottom, and the impossi- 
bility of looking after my Spanish estates. 

Prue turned and looked at me with mild sur- 
prise; but I saw that her mind had gone down 
the street with Bourne. I could never discover 
if he held much Spanish stock. But I think 
he does. All the Spanish proprietors have a 
certain expression. Bourne has it to a remark- 
able degree. It is a kind of look, as if, in fact, 
a man’s mind were in Spain. Bourne was an 
old lover of Prue’s, and he is not married, 
which is strange for a man in his position. 

It is not easy for me to say how I know so 
much, as I certainly do, about my castles in 
Spain. The sun always shines upon them. 
They stand lofty and fair in a luminous, golden 
atmosphere a little hazy, and dreamy, perhaps, 
like the Indian summer, but in which no gales 
blow and there are no tempests. All the 
sublime mountains, and beautiful valleys, and 
soft landscape, that I have not yet seen, are 
to be found in the grounds. They command 
a noble view of the Alps so fine, indeed, that I 
should be quite content with the prospect of 
them from the highest tower of my castle, and 
not care to go to Switzerland. 


38 


PRUE AND I. 


The neighboring ruins, too, are as pictur- 
esque as those of Italy, and my desire of 
standing in the Coliseum, and of seeing the 
shattered arches of the Aqueducts stretching 
along the Campagna and melting into the 
Alban Mount, is entirely quenched. The rich 
gloom of my orange groves is gilded by fruit 
as brilliant of complexion and exquisite of 
flavor as any that ever dark-eyed Sorrento girls, 
looking over the high plastered walls of 
southern Italy, hand to the youthful travelers, 
climbing on donkeys up the narrow lane 
beneath. 

The Nile flows through my grounds. The 
Desert lies upon their edge, and Damascus 
stands in my garden. I am given to under- 
stand, also, that the Parthenon has been re- 
moved to my Spanish possessions. The 
Golden Horn is my fish-preserve; my flocks 
of golden fleece are pastured on the plain of 
Marathon, and the honey of Hymettus is dis- 
tilled from the flowers that grow in the vale of 
Enna— all in my Spanish domains. 

From the windows of those castles look the 
beautiful women whom I have never seen, whose 
portraits the poets have painted. They wait 
for me there, and chiefly the fair-haired child, 
lost to my eyes so long ago, now bloomed into 
an impossible beauty. The lights that never 
shone, glance at evening in the vaulted halls, 
upon banquets that were never spread. The 
bands I have never collected, play all night 
long, and enchant the brilliant company, ‘that 
was never assembled, into silence. 


PRUE AND I. 


39 


In the long summer morningfs the children 
that I never had, play in the gardens that I 
never planted. I hear their sweet voices sound- 
ing low and far away, calling, “Father! 
Father!'* I see the lost fair-haired girl, grown 
now into a woman, descending the stately 
stairs of my castle in Spain, stepping out upon 
the lawn, and playing with those children. 
They bound away together down the garden ; 
but those voices linger, this time airily calling, 
“Mother! Mother!” 

But there is a stranger magic than this in my 
Spanish estates. The lawny slopes on which, 
when a child, I played, in my father’s old 
country place, which was sold when he failed, 
are all there, and not a flower faded, nor a 
blade of grass sere. The green leaves have not 
fallen from the spring woods of half a century 
ago, and a gorgeous autumn has blazed un- 
dimmed for fifty years, among the trees I 
remember. 

Chestnuts are not especially sweet to my 
palate now, but those with which I used to 
prick my fingers when gathering them in New 
Hampshire woods are exquisite as ever to my 
taste, when I think of eating them in Spain. 
I never ride horseback now at home; but in 
Spain, when I think of it, I bound over all the 
fences in the country, barebacked upon the 
wildest horses. Sermons I am apt to find a 
little soporific in this country ; but in Spain I 
should listen as reverently as ever, for propri- 
etors must set a good example on their estates. 

Plays are insufferable to me here — Prue and 


40 


PRUE AND I. 


I never go, Prue, indeed, is not quite sure it 
is moral; but the theaters in my Spanish 
castles are of a prodigious splendor, and when I 
think of going there, Prue sits in a front box 
with me — a kind of royal box — the good 
woman, attired in such wise as I have never 
seen her here, while I wear my white waist- 
coat, which in Spain has no appearance of 
mending, but dazzles with immortal newness, 
and is a miraculous fit. 

Yes, and in those castles in Spain, Prue is 
not the placid, breeches-patching helpmate 
with whom you are acquainted, but her face 
has a bloom which we both remember, and her 
movement a grace which my Spanish svvrans 
emulate, and her voice a music sweeter than 
those that orchestras discourse. She is always 
there what she seemed to me when I fell in 
love with her, many and many years ago. The 
neighbors called her then a nice, capable girl; 
and certainly she did knit and darn with a zeal 
and success to which my feet and my legs 
have testified for nearly half a century. But 
she could spin a finer web than ever came from 
cotton, and in its subtle meshes my heart v/as 
entangled, and there has reposed softly and 
happily ever since. The neighbors declared 
she could make pudding and cake better than 
any girl of her age; but stale bread from 
Prue’s hand was ambrosia to my palate. 

“She who makes everything well, even to 
making neighbors speak well of her, will 
surely make a good wife,” said I to myself 


PRUE AND I. 


41 


when I knew her; and the echo of a half cen- 
tury answers, “a good wife. 

when I meditate my Spanish castles, I 
see Prue in them as my heart saw her standing 
by her father’s door. “Age cannot wither 
her.” There is a magic in the Spanish air 
that paralyzes Time. He glides by, unnoticed 
and unnoticing. I greatly admire the Alps, 
which I see so distinctly from my Spanish win- 
dows; I delight in the taste of the southern 
fruit that ripens upon my terraces; I enjoy the 
pensive shade of the Italian ruins in my gar- 
dens; I like to shoot crocodiles, and talk with 
the Sphinx upon the shores of the Nile, flow- 
ing through my domain ; I am glad to drink 
sherbet in Damascus, and fleece my flocks on 
the plains of Marathon; but I would resign all 
these forever rather than part with that Span- 
ish portrait of Prue for a day. Nay, have I not 
resigned them all forever, to live with that 
portrait’s changing original? 

I have often wondered how I should reach 
my castles. The desire of going comes over 
me very strongly sometimes, and I endeavor to 
see how I can arrange my affairs, so as to get 
away. To tell the truth, I am not quite sure 
of the route — I mean, to that particular part 
of Spain in which my estates lie. I have in- 
quired very particularly, but nobody seems to 
know precisely. One morning I met young 
Aspen, trembling with excitement. 

“What’s the matter?” asked I with interest, 
for I knew that he held a great deal of Span- 
ish stock. 


42 


PRUE AND I. 


‘‘Oh!” said he, “I’m going out to take pos- 
session. I have found the way to my castles 
in Spain. ” 

“Dear me!” I answered, with the blood 
streaming into my face ; and, heedless of Prue, 
pulling my glove until it ripped — “what is it?” 

“The direct route is through California,” 
answered he. 

“But then you have the sea to cross after- 
ward,” said I, remembering the map. 

“Not at all,” answered Aspen, “the road 
runs along the shore of the Sacramento River. ’ * 

He darted away from me, and I did not meet 
him again. I was very curious to know if he 
arrived safely in Spain, and was expecting 
every day to hear news from him of my prop- 
erty there, when, one evening, I bought an ex- 
tra full of California news, and the first thing 
upon which my eye fell was this: “Died, in 
San Francisco, Edward Aspen, Esq., aged 
thirty- five. ” There is a large body of the 
Spanish stockholders who believe with Aspen, 
and sail for California every week. I have not 
yet heard of their arrival out at their castles, 
but I suppose they are so busy with their own 
affairs there, that they have no time to write 
to the rest of us about the condition of our 
property. 

There was my wife’s cousin, too, Jonathan 
Bud, who is a good, honest youth from the 
country, and, after a few weeks’ absence he 
burst into the office one day, just as I was bal- 
ancing my books, and whispered to me, eagerly: 

“I’ve found my castle in Spain.” 


PRUE AND I. 


43 


I put the blotting-paper in the leaf deliber- 
ately, for I was wiser now than when Aspen 
had excited me, and looked at my wife’s 
cousin, Jonathan Bud, inquiringly. 

“Polly Bacon,” whispered he, winking. 

I continued the interrogative glance. 

“She’s going to marry me, and she’ll show 
me the way to Spain,” said Jonathan Bud 
hilariously. 

“She’ll make you walk Spanish, Jonathan 
Bud,” said I. 

And so she does. He makes no more hilari- 
ous remarks. He never bursts into a room. 
He does not ask us to dinner. He says that 
Mrs. Bud does not like smoking. Mrs. Bud 
has nerves and babies. She has a way of say- 
ing, “Mr. Bud!” which destroys conversation, 
and casts a gloom upon society. 

It occurred to me that Bourne, the million- 
aire, must have ascertained the safest and most 
expeditious route to Spain; so I stole a few 
minutes one afternoon, and went into his office. 
He was sitting at his desk, writing rapidly, 
and surrounded by files of papers and patterns, 
specimens, boxes, everything that covers the 
tables of a great merchant. In the outer rooms 
clerks were writing. Upon high shelves over 
their heads were huge chests, covered with 
dust, dingy with age, many of them, and all 
marked with the name of the firm, in large 
black letters — “Bourne & Dye. ” They were all 
numbered also with the proper year; some of 
them with a single capital B, and dates extend- 
ing back into the last century, when old Bourne 


44 


PRUE AND I. 


made the great fortune, before he went into 
partnership with Dye. Everything was indi- 
cative of immense and increasing prosperity. 

There were several gentlemen in waiting to 
converse with Bourne (we all call him so, famili- 
arly, downtown), and I waited until they went 
out. But others came in. There was no 
pause in the rush. All kinds of inquiries were 
made and answered. At length I stepped up. 

“A moment, please, M. Bourne.*’ 

He looked up hastily, wished me good-morn- 
ing, which he had done to none of the others, 
and which courtesy I attributed to Spanish 
sympathy. 

“What is it, sir?” he asked blandly,but with 
wrinkled brow. 

“Mr. Bourne, have you any castles in 
Spain?” said I, without preface. 

He looked at me for a few moments with- 
out speaking, and without seeming to see me. 
His brow gradually smoothed, and his eyes, 
apparently looking into the street, were really, 
I have no doubt, feasting upon the Spanish 
landscape. 

“Too many, too many,” said he at length, 
musingly, shaking his head, and without ad- 
dressing me. 

I suppose he felt himself too much extended 
— as we say in Wall Street. He feared, I 
thought, that he had too much impracticable 
property elsewhere, to own so much in Spain ; 
so I asked: 

“Will you tell me what you consider the 
shortest and safest route thither, Mr. Bourne? 


PRUE AND I. 


45 


for, of course, a man who drives such an im- 
mense trade with all parts of the world, will 
know all that I have come to inquire. ’ * 

“My dear sir, ’’ answered he wearily, “I have 
been trying all my life to discover it ; but none 
of my ships have ever been there — none of my 
captains have any report to make. They bring 
me, as they brought my father, gold dust from 
Guinea; ivory, pearls, and precious stones, 
from every part of the earth ; but not a fruit, 
not a solitary flower, from one of my castles in 
Spain. I have sent clerks, agents, and travel- 
ers of all kinds, philosophers, pleasure-hunt- 
ers, and invalids, in all sorts of ships, to all 
sorts of places, but none of them ever saw or 
heard of my castles, except one young poet, 
and he died in a madhouse.” 

“Mr. Bourne, will you take flve thousand at 
ninety-seven?” hastily demanded a man, 
whom, as he entered, I recognized as a broker. 
“We’ll make a splendid thing of it.” 

Bourne nodded assent, and the broker dis- 
appeared. 

“Happy man!’’ muttered the merchant, as 
the broker went out; “he has no castles in 
Spain. ’ ’ 

“I am sorry to have troubled you, Mr. 
Bourne,” said I, retiring. 

“I am glad you came,” returned he; “but I 
assure you, had I known the route you hoped 
to ascertain from me, I should have sailed 
years and years ago. People sail for the North- 
west Passage, which is nothing when you have 
found it. Why don’t the English Admiralty fit 


46 


PRUE AND L 


out expeditions to discover all our castles m 
Spain?” 

He sat lost in thought. 

“It’s nearly post-time, sir,” said the clerk. 

Mr. Bourne did not heed him. He was still 
musing; and I turned to go, wishing him good- 
morning. When I had nearly reached the door, 
he called me back, saying, as if continuing his 
remarks: 

“It is strange that 3^ou, of all men, should 
come to ask me this question. If I envy any 
man, it is you, for I sincerely assure you that 
I supposed you lived altogether upon your 
Spanish estates. I once thought I knew the 
way to mine. I gave directions for furnishing- 
them, and ordered bridal bouquets, which were 
never used, but I suppose they are there still.” 

He paused a moment, then said slowly: 
“How is 37'our wife?” 

I told him that Prue was well — that she was 
always remarkably well. Mr. Bourne shook 
me warmly by the hand. 

“Thank you,” said he. “Good-morning.” 

I knew why he thanked me ; I knew why he 
thought that I lived altogether upon my Span- 
ish estates; I knew a little bit about those 
bridal bouquets. Mr. Bourne, the millionaire, 
was an old lover of Prue’s. There is some- 
thing very odd about these Spanish castles. 
When I think of them, I somehow see the fair- 
haired girl whom I knew when I was not out 
of short jackets. When Bourne meditates 
them, he sees Prue and me quietly at home in 
their best chambers. It is a very singular 


PRUE AND I. 


47 


thing that my wife should live in another 
man’s castle in Spain. 

At length I resolved to ask Titbottom if he 
had ever heard of the best route to our estates. 
He said that he owned castles, and sometimes 
there was an expression in his face, as if he 
saw them. I hope he did. I should long ago 
have asked him if he had ever observed the 
turrets of my possessions in the West, without 
alluding to Spain, if I had not feared he would 
suppose I was mocking his poverty. I hope 
his poverty has not turned his head, for he is 
very forlorn. 

One Sunday I went with him a few miles into 
the country. It was a soft, bright day, the 
fields and hills lay turned to the sky, as if 
every leaf and blade of grass were nerves, 
bared to the touch of the sun. I almost felt 
the ground warm under my feet. The mead- 
ows waved and glittered, the lights and shad- 
ows were exquisite, and the distant hills seemed 
only to remove the horizon farther away. As 
we strolled along, picking wild flowers, for it 
was in summer, I was thinking what a fine day 
it was for a trip to Spain, when Titbottom sud- 
denly exclaimed: 

“Thank God! I own this landscape.” 

“You,” returned I. 

“Certainly,” said he. 

“Why,” I answered, “I thought this was part 
of Bourne’s property?” 

Titbottom smiled. 

“Does Bourne own the sun and sky? Does 
Bourne own that sailing shadow yonder? Does 


48 


PRUE AND 1. 


Bourne own the golden luster of the grain, or 
the motion of the wood, or those ghosts of hills, 
that glide pallid along the horizon? Bourne 
owns the dirt and fences; I own the beauty 
that makes the landscape, or otherwise how 
could I own castles in Spain?’' 

That was very true. I respected Titbottom 
more than ever. 

“Do you know,” said he, after a long pause, 
'^‘that I fancy my castles lie just beyond those 
distant hills. At all events, I can see them 
distinctly from their summits. ’ ’ 

He smiled quietly as he spoke, and it was 
then I asked: 

“But, Titbottom, have you never discovered 
the way to them?” 

“Dear me! yes,” answered he,“ I know the 
way well enough ; but it would do no good to 
follow it. I should give out before I arrived. 
It is a long and difficult journey for a man of 
my years and habits — and income,” he added 
slowly. 

As he spoke he seated himself upon the 
ground; and while he pulled long blades of 
grass, and, putting them between his thumbs, 
whistled shrilly, he said : 

“I have never known but two men who 
reached their estates in Spain. ” 

“Indeed!” said I, “how did they go?” 

“One went over the side of the ship, and the 
other out of a third-story window,” said Tit- 
bottom, fitting a broad blade between his 
thumbs and blowing a demoniacal blast. 





“ He seated himself upon the ground.”— Page 48. 

True and I. 




PRUE AND I. 


49 


“And I know one proprietor who resides 
upon his estates constantly,” continued he. 

“Who is that?” 

“Our old friend Slug, whom you may see 
any day at the asylum, just coming in from the 
hunt, or going to call upon his friend the 
grand Lama, or dressing for the wedding of 
the Man in the Moon, or receiving an ambas- 
sador from Timbuctoo. Whenever I go to see 
him. Slug insists that I am the pope, disguised 
as a journeyman carpenter, and he entertains 
me in the most distinguished manner. He 
always insists upon kissing my foot, and I be- 
stow upon him, kneeling, the apostolic bene- 
diction. This is the only Spanish proprietor in 
possession, with whom I am acquainted.” 

And so saying Titbottom lay back upon the 
ground, and making a spyglass of his hand, 
surveyed the landscape through it. This was 
a marvelous bookkeeper of more than 
sixty ! 

“I know another man who lived in his Span- 
ish castle for two months, and then was tum- 
bled out head first. That was young Stunning 
who married old Buhl’s daughter. She was all 
smiles, and mamma was all sugar, and Stun- 
ning was all bliss, for two months. He car- 
ried his head in the clouds, and felicity abso- 
lutely foamed at his eyes. He was drowned in 
love; seeing, as usual, not what really was, 
but what he fancied. He lived so exclusively 
in his castle, that he forgot the office down- 
town, and one morning there came a fall, and 
Stunning was smashed.” Titbottom arose, 

4 Prue aud I 


50 


PRUE AND I. 


and stooping over, contemplated the landscape 
with his head down between his legs. 

*‘It’s quite a new effect so," said the nimble 

bnnWppTipr 

“Wellf" said I, “Stunning failed?" 

“Oh, yes, smashed all up, and the castle in 
Spain came down about his ears with a tremen- 
dous crash. The family sugar was all dis- 
solved into the original cane in a moment. 
Fairy times are over, are they? Heigh-ho! 
the falling stones of Stunning’s castle have 
left their marks all over his face. I call them 
his Spanish scars. ’ ’ 

“But, my dear Titbottom, " said I, “what 
is the matter with you, this morning, your 
usual sedateness is quite gone?" 

“It’s only the exhilarating air of Spain," he 
answered. “My castles are so beautiful that I 
can never think of them, nor speak of them, 
without excitement; when I was younger I 
desired to reach them even more ardently than 
now, because I heard that the philosopher’s 
stone was in the vault of one of them. " 

“Indeed," said I, yielding to sympathy, 
“and I have good reason to believe that the 
fountain of eternal youth flows through the 
garden of one of mine. Do you know whether 
there are any children upon your grounds?" 

“ ‘The children of Alice call Bartrum 
father!’ " replied Titbottom, solemnly, and in 
a low voice, as he folded his faded hands be- 
fore him, and stood erect, looking wistfully 
over the landscape. The light wind played 
with his thin white hair, and his sober, black 


PRUE AND I. 


51 


suit was almost somber in the sunshine. The 
half bitter expression, which I had remarked 
upon his face during part of our conversation, 
had passed away, and the old sadness had re- 
turned to his eye. He stood, in the pleasant 
morning, the very image of a great proprietor 
of castles in Spain. 

“There is wonderful music there,’’ he said: 
“sometimes I awake at night, and hear it. It 
is full of the sweetness of youth, and love, and 
a new world. I lie and listen, and I seem to 
arrive at the great gates of my estates. They 
swing open upon noiseless hinges, and the 
tropic of my dreams receives me. Up the 
broad steps, whose marble pavement mingled 
light and shadow print with shifting mosaic, 
beneath the boughs of lustrous oleanders, and 
palms, and trees of unimaginable fragrance, I 
pass into the vestibule, warm with summer 
odors, and into the presence-chamber beyond, 
where my wife waits me. But castle, and 
wife, and odorous woods, and pictures, and 
statues, and all the bright substance of my 
household, seem to reel and glimmer in the 
splendor, as the music fails. 

“But when it swells again, I clasp the wife 
to my heart, and we move on with a fair soci- 
ety, beautiful women, noble men, before 
whom the tropical luxuriance of that world 
bends and bows in homage; and, through end- 
less days and nights of eternal summer, the 
stately revel of our life proceeds. Then, sud- 
denly, the music stops. 

I hear my watch ticking under the pillow. 


52 


PRUE AND I. 


I see dimly the outline of my little upper 
room. Then I fall asleep, and in the morning 
some one of the boarders at the breakfast- 
table says: 

“ ‘Did you hear the serenade last night, Mr. 
Titbottom.?* 

I doubted no longer that Titbottom was a 
very extensive proprietor. The truth is, that 
he was so constantly engaged in planning and 
arranging his castles, that he conversed very 
little at the office, and I have misinterpreted 
his silence. As we walked homeward, that 
day, he was more than ever tender and gentle. 
“We must all have something to do in this 
world,/’ said he, “and I, who have so much 
leisure — for you know I have no wife nor chil- 
dren to work for — know not what I should do, 
if I had not my castles in Spain to look 
after.’’ 

When I reached home, my darling Prue was 
sitting in the small parlor, reading. I felt a 
little guilty for having been so long away, and 
upon my only holiday, too. So I began to say 
that Titbottom invited me to go to walk, and 
that I had no idea we had gone so far, and 
that ’’ 

“Don’t excuse yourself,’’ said Prue, smiling 
as she laid down her book; ‘T am glad you 
have enjoyed yourself. You ought to go out 
sometimes, and breathe the fresh air, and run 
about the fields, which I am not strong enough 
to do. Why did you not bring home Mr. Tit- 
bottom to tea? He is so lonel}", and looks so 
sad. I am sure he has very little comfort in 


PRUE AND I. 


53 


this life/’ said my thoughtful Prue, as she 
called Jane to set the tea table. 

“But he has a good deal of comfort in Spain, 
Prue/’ answered 1. 

“When was Mr. Titbottom in Spain?” in- 
quired my wife. 

“Why, he is there more than half the time,” 
I replied. 

Prue looked quietly at me and smiled. “I 
see it has done you good to breathe the 
country air,” said she. “Jane, get some of 
the blackberry jam, and call Adoniram and 
the children. ” 

So we went in to tea. We eat in the back 
parlor, for our little house and limited means 
do not allow us to have things upon the Span- 
ish scale. It is better than a sermon to hear 
my wife Prue talk to the children; and when 
she speaks to me it seems sweeter than psalm 
singing; at least, such as we have in our 
church. I am very happy. 

Yet I dream my dreams, and attend to my 
castles in Spain. I have so much property 
there, that I could not, in conscience, neglect 
it. All the years of my youth, and the hopes 
of my manhood, are stored away, like precious 
stones, in the vaults; and I know that I shall 
find everything convenient, elegant, and 
beautiful, when I come into possession. 

As the years go by, I am not conscious that 
my interest diminishes. If I see that age is 
subtly sifting his snow in the dark hair of my 
Prue, I smile, contented, for her hair, dark and 
heavy as when I first saw it, is all carefully 


54 


PRUE AND 1. 


treasured in my castles in Spain. If I feel her 
arm more heavily leaning upon mine, as we 
walk around the squares, I press it closely to 
my side, for I know that the easy grace of her 
youth’s motion will be restored by the elixir 
of that Spanish air. If her voice sometimes 
falls less clearly from her lips, it is no less 
sweet tome, for the music of her voice’s prime 
fills, freshly as ever, those Spanish halls. If 
the light I love fades a little from her eyes, I 
know that the glances she gave me, in our 
youth, are the eternal sunshine of my castles 
in Spain. 

I defy time and change. Each year laid 
upon our heads, is a hand of blessing. I have 
no doubt that I shall find the shortest route to 
my possessions as soon as need be. Perhap.s, 
when Adoniram is married, we shall all go out 
to one of my castles to pass the honeymoon. 

Ah ! if the true history of Spain could be 
written, what a book were there! The most 
purely romantic ruin in the world is the 
Alhambra. But of the Spanish castles, more 
spacious and splendid than any possible 
Alhambra, and forever unruined, no towers 
are visible, no pictures have been painted, and 
only a few* ecstatic songs have been sung. 
The pleasure dome of Kubla Khan, which 
Coleridge saw in Xanadu (a province with 
which I am not familiar), and a fine Castle of 
I redolence, belonging to Thomson, and the pal- 
ace of art which Tennyson built as a “lordly 
pleasure-house” for his soul, are among the 
best statistical accounts of those Spanish 


PRUE AND I. 


55 


estates. Turner, too, has done for them much 
the same service that Owen Jones has done for 
the Alhambra. In the vignette to Moore’s 
“Epicurean” you will find represented one of 
the most extensive castles in Spain : and there 
are several exquisite studies from others, by 
the same artists, published in Roger’s “Italy. ” 

But I confess I do not recognize any of these 
as mine, and that fact makes me prouder of 
my own castles, for, if there be such bound- 
less variety of magnificence in their aspect and 
exterior, imagine the life that is led there, a 
life not unworthy such a setting. 

If Adoniram should be married within a 
reasonable time, and we should make up that 
little family party to go out, I have considered 
already what society I should ask to meet the 
bride. Jephthah’s daughter and the Chevalier 
Bayard, I should say — and Fair Rosamond with 
Dean Swift — King Solomon and the Queen of 
Sheba would come over, I think, from his 
famous castle — Shakespeare and his friend the 
Marquis of Southampton might come in a gal- 
ley with Cleopatra; and, if any guest were 
offended by her presence, he should devote 
himself to the Fair One with Golden Locks. 
Mephistopheles is not personally disagreeable, 
and is exceedingly well-bred in society, I am 
told; and he shoiild come tete-a tete with Mrs. 
Rawdon Crawley. Spencer should escort his 
Faerie Queen, who would preside at the tea 
table. 

Mr. Samuel Weller I should ask as Lord of 
Misrule, and Dr. Johnson as the Abbot of 


56 


PRUE AND I. 


Unreason. I would suggest to Major Dobbin 
to accompany Mrs. Fry; Alcibiades would 
bring Homer and Plato in his purple-sailed gal- 
ley; and I would have Aspasia, Ninon de 
I’Enclos, and Mrs. Battle, to make up a table of 
whist with Queen Elizabeth. I shall order a 
seat placed in the oratory for Lady Jane Grey 
and Joan of Arc. I shall invite General 
Washington to bring some of the choicest 
cigars from his plantation for Sir Walter 
Raleigh; and Chaucer, Browning, and Walter 
Savage Lander, should talk with Goethe, who 
is to bring Tasson on one arm and Iphigenia 
on the other. 

Dante and Mr. Carlyle would prefer, I sup- 
pose, to go down into the dark vaults under 
the castle. The Man in the Moon, the Old 
Harry, and William of the Wisp would be 
valuable additions, and the Laureate Tennyson 
might compose an official ode upon the occa- 
sion; or I would ask “They** to say all about 
it. 

Of course there are many other guests whose 
names I do not at the moment recall. But I 
should invite, first of all, Miles Coverdale, 
who knows everything about these places and 
this society, for he was at Blithedale, and he 
has described “a select party’* which he 
attended at a castle in the air. 

Prue has not yet looked over the list. In 
fact, I am not quite sure that she knows my 
intention. For I wish to surprise her, and I 
think it would be generous to ask Bourne to 
lead her out in the bridal quadrille. I think 


PRUE AND L 


57 


that I shall try the first waltz with the girl I 
sometimes seem to see in my fairest castle, but 
whom I very vaguely remember. Titbottom 
will come with old Burton and Jaques. But I 
have not prepared half my invitations. Do 
you not guess it, seeing that I did not name, 
first of all Elia, who assisted that the “Rejoic- 
ings upon the new year’s coming of age?” 

And yet, if Adoniram should never marry? 
— or if we could not get to Spain? — or if the 
company would not come? 

What then? Shall I betray a secret? I have 
already entertained this party in my humble 
little parlor at home; and Prue presided as 
serenely as Semiramis over her court. Have 
I not said that I defy time, and shall space hope 
to daunt me? I keep books by day, but by 
night books keep me. They leave me to 
dreams and reveries. Shall I confess, that 
sometimes when I have been sitting, reading 
to my Prue, Cymbeline, perhaps, or a Canter- 
bury tale, I have seemed to see clearly before 
me the broad highway to my castles in Spain ; 
and as she looked up from her work, and smiled 
in sympathy, I have even fancied that I was 
already there. 


58 


PRUE AND I. 


SEA FROM SHORE. 

“Come unto these yellow sands.” 

— Tempest. 

“Argosies of magic sails, 

Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly 
bales. ' ’ — Ten ny son. 

In the month of June, Prue and I like to 
walk upon the Battery toward sunset, and 
watch the steamers, crowded with passengers, 
bound for the pleasant places along the coast 
where people pass the hot months. Seaside 
lodgings are not very comfortable, I am told ; 
but who would not be a little pinched in his 
chamber, if his windows looked upon the sea? 

In such praises of the ocean do I indulge at 
such times, and so respectfully do I regard the 
sailors who may chance to pass, that Prue often 
says, with her shrewd smiles, that my mind is a 
kind of Greenwich Hospital, full of abortive 
marine hopes and wishes, broken-legged inten- 
tions, blind regrets, and desires, whose hands 
have been shot away in some hard battle of 
experience, so that they cannot grasp the 
results toward which they reach. 

She is right, as usual. Such hopes and in- 
tentions do lie ruined and hopeless now, strewn 
about the placid contentment of my mental 
life as the old pensioners sit about the grounds 


PRUE AND I. 


59 


at Greenwich, maimed and musing in the quiet 
morning sunshine. Many a one among them 
thinks what a Nelson he would have been if 
both his legs had not been prematurely carried 
away ; or in what a Trafalgar of triumph he 
would have ended, if, unfortunately, he had 
not happened to have been blown blind by the 
explosion of that unlucky magazine. 

So I dream, sometimes, of a straight scarlet 
collar, stiff with gold lace, around my neck, 
instead of this limp white cravat; and I have 
even brandished my quill at the office so cut- 
lass wise, that Titbottom has paused in his ad- 
ditions and looked at me as if he doubted 
whether I should come out quite square in my 
petty cash. Yet he understands it. Titbottom 
was born in Nantucket. 

That is the secret of my fondness for the 
sea; I was born by it. Not more surely do 
Savoyards pine for the mountains, or Cock- 
neys for the sound of Bow bells, than those 
who are born within sight and sound of the 
ocean to return to it and renew their fealty. 
In dreams the children of the sea hear its voice. 
I have read in some book of travels that certain 
tribes of Arabs have no name for the ocean, 
and that when they came to the shore for the 
first time, they asked with eager sadness, as if 
penetrated by the conviction of a superior 
beauty, “what is that desert of water more 
beautiful than the land?” 

And in the translations of German stories 
which Adoniram and the other children read, 
and into which I occasionally look in the even- 


60 


PRUE AND I. 


ing when they are gone to bed — for I like to 
know what interests my children — I find that 
the Germans, who do not live near the sea, 
love the fairy lore of water, and tell the sweet 
stories of Undine and Melusina, as if they had 
especial charm for them, becaUvSe their country 
is inland. 

We who know the sea have less fairy feel- 
ing about it, but our realities are romance. My 
earliest remembrances are of a long range of 
old, half-dilapidated stores; red brick stores 
with steep wooden roofs, and stone window 
frames and door frames which stood upon 
docks built as if for immense trade with all 
quarters of the globe. 

Generally, they were only a few sloops 
moored to the tremendous posts, which I 
fancied could easily hold fast a Spanish 
Armada in a tropical hurricane. But some- 
times a great ship, an East Indiaman, 
with rusty, seamed, blistered sides, and dingy 
sails, came slowly moving up the harbor, with 
an air of indolent self-importance and con- 
sciousness of superiority, which inspired me 
with profound respect. If the ship had ever 
chanced to run down a rowboat, or a sloop, or 
any specimen of smaller craft, I should only 
have wondered at the temerity of any floating 
thing in crossing the path of such supreme 
majesty. The ship was leisurely chained and 
cabled to the old dock, and then came the di'"- 
emboweling. 

How the stately monster had been fattening 
upon foreign spoils ! How it had gorged itself 


PRUE AND I. 


61 


(such galleons did never seem to me of the 
feminine gender) with the luscious treasures 
of the tropics! It had lain its lazy length along 
the shores of China, and sucked in whole 
flowery harvests of tea. The Brazilian sun 
flashed through the strong wicker prisons, 
bursting with bananas and nectarean fruits 
that eschew the temperate zone. Steams of 
camphor, of sandal wood, arose from the hold. 
Sailors chanting cabalistic strains, that had to 
my ear a shrill and monotonous pathos, like 
the uniform rising and falling of an autumn 
wind, turned cranks that lifted the bales, and 
boxes, and crates, and swung them ashore. 

But to my mind, the spell of their singing 
raised the fragrant freight, and not the crank. 
Madagascar and Ceylon appeared at the mystic 
bidding of the song. The placid sunshine of 
the docks was perfumed with India. The uni- 
versal calm of southern seas poured from the 
bosom of the ship over the quiet, decaying old 
northern port. 

Long after the confusion of unloading was 
over, and the ship lay as if all voyages were 
ended, I dared to creep timorously along the 
edge of the dock, and at great risk of falling 
in the black water of its huge shadow, I placed 
my hand upon the hot hulk, and so established 
a mystic and exquisite connection with Pacific 
islands, with palm groves and all the passion- 
ate beauties they embower; with jungles, Ben- 
gal tigers, pepper, and the crushed feet of 
Chinese fairies. I touched Asia, the Cape of 
Good Hope, and the Happy Islands. I would 


62 


PRUE AND I. 


not believe that the heat I felt was of our 
northern sun ; to my finer sympathy it burned 
with equatorial fervors. 

The freight was piled in the old stores. I 
believe that many of them remain, but they 
have lost their character. When I knew them, 
not onl}’’ was I younger, but partial decay had 
overtaken the town ; at least the bulk of its 
India trade had shifted to New York and Bos- 
ton. But the appliances remained. There 
was no throng of busy traffickers, and after 
school, in the afternoon, I strolled by and 
gazed into the solemn interiors. 

Silence reigned within —silence, dimness, 
and piles of foreign treasure. Vast coils of 
cable, like tame boa-constrictors, served as 
seats for men with large stomachs, and heavy 
v/atch seals, and nankeen trousers, who sat 
looking out of the door toward the ships, with 
little other sign of life than an occasional low 
talking, as if in their sleep. Huge hogsheads 
perspiring brown sugar and oozing slow molas- 
ses, as if nothing tropical could keep within 
bounds, but must continually expand, and ex- 
ude, and overflow, stood against the walls, and 
had an architectural significance, for they 
darkly reminded me of Egyptian prints, and 
in the duskiness of the low-vaulted store 
seemed cyclopean columns incomplete. Strange 
festoons and heaps of bags, square piles of 
square boxes cased in mats, bales of airy sum- 
mer stuffs, which, even in winter, scoffed at 
cold, and shamed it by audacious assumption 
of eternal sun; little specimen boxes of pre- 


PRUE AND 1. 


63 


cious dyes that even now shine through my 
memory, like old Venetian schools unpainted 
— these were all there in rich confusion. 

The stores had a twilight of dimness, the air 
was spicy with mingled odors. I liked to look 
suddenly in from the glare of sunlight outside, 
and then the cool sweet dimness was like the 
palpable breath of the far-off island groves; 
and if only some parrot or macaw hung within, 
would flaunt with glistening plumage in his 
cage, and as the gay hue flashed in a chance 
sunbeam, call in his hard, shrill voice, as if 
thrusting sharp sounds upon a glistening wire 
from out that grateful gloom, then the enchant- 
ment was complete, and without moving, I was 
circumnavigating the globe. 

From the old stores and the docks slowly 
crumbling, touched, I know not why or how, 
by the pensive air of past prosperity, I ram- 
bled out of town on those well remembered 
afternoons, to the fields that lay upon hillsides 
over the harbor, and there sat, looking out to 
sea, fancying some distant sail proceeding to 
the glorious ends of the earth, to be my type 
and image, who would so sail, stately and suc- 
cessful, to all the glorious ports of the Future. 
Going home, I returned by the stores, which 
black porters were closing. But I stood long 
looking in, saturating my imagination, and 
as it appeared, my clothes, with the spicy sug- 
gestion. For when I reached home my thrifty 
mother — another Prue — came snuffing and 
smelling about me. 

“Why! my son (snuff, snuff), where have 


64 


PRUE AND I. 


you been? (snuff, snuff). Has the baker been 
making (snuff) gingerbread? You smell as if 
you’d been in (snuff, snuff) a bag of cinna- 
mon. ’ ’ 

“I’ve only been on the wharves, mother.’’ 

“Well, my dear, I hope you haven’t stuck 
up your clothes with molasses. Wharves are 
dirty places, and dangerous. You must take 
care of yourself, my son. Really, this smell 
is (snuff, snuff) very strong.” 

But I departed from the maternal presence, 
proud and happy. I was aromatic. I bore 
about me the true foreign air. Whoever 
smelled me smelled distant countries. I had 
nutmeg, spices, cinnamon, and cloves, with- 
out the jolly red nose. I pleased myself with 
being the representative of the Indies. I was 
in good odor with myself and all the world. 

I do not know how it is, but surely nature 
makes kindly provision. An imagination so 
easily excited as mine could not have escaped 
disappointment if it had had ample opportu- 
nity and experience of the lands it so longed to 
see. Therefore, although I made the India 
voyage, I have never been a traveler, and sav- 
ing the little time I was ashore in India, I did 
not lose the sense of novelty and romance 
which the first sight of foreign lands inspires. 

That little time was all my foreign travel. I 
am glad of it. I see now that I should never 
have found the country from which the East 
Indiaman of my early days arrived. The palm 
groves do not grow with which that hand laid 
upon the ship placed me in magic conception. 


PRUE AND I. 


65 


As for the lovely Indian maid whom the palmy 
arches bowered, she has long since clasped 
some native lover to her bosom, and, ripened 
into mild maternity, how should I know her 
own? 

“You would find her quite as easily now as 
then,” says my Prue, when I speak of it. 

She is right again, as usual, that precious 
woman ; and it is therefore I feel that if the 
chances of life have moored me fast to a book- 
keeper’s desk, they have left all the lands I 
longed to see fairer and fresher in my mind 
than they could ever be in my memory. Upon 
my only voyage I used to climb into the top 
and search the horizon for the shore. But now 
in a moment of calm thought I see a more 
Indian India than ever mariner discerned, and 
do not envy the youths who go there and make 
fortunes, who wear grass-cloth jackets, drink 
iced beer, and eat curry; whose minds fall 
asleep, and whose bodies have liver complaints. 

Unseen by me forever, nor ever re- 
gretted, shall wave the Egyptian palms and 
the Italian pines. Untrodden by me, the 
Forum shall still echo with the footfall of 
imperial Rome, and the Parthenon, unrifled of 
its marbles, look, perfect, across the Egean 
blue. 

My young friends return from their foreign 
tours elate with the smiles of a nameless Italian 
or Parisian belle. I know not such cheap 
delights; I am a suitor of Vittoria Colonna; I 
walk with Tasso along the terraced garden of 
the Villa d’Este, and look to see Beatrice 

5 Prue and I 


66 


PRUE AND I. 


smiling dawn the rich gloom of the cypress 
shade. Yom stayed at the Hotel Europa, in 
Venice, at Danielli’s, or the Leone bianco ; I 
am the guest of Marino Faliero, and I whisper 
to his wife as we climb the giant staircase in 
the summer moonlight : 

“Ah ! senza amare 
Andare sul mare, 

Cal sposo del mare. 

Non puo consolare.” 

It is for the same reason that I did not cate 
to dine with you and Aurelia, that I am content 
not to stand in St. Peter's. Alas! if I could see 
the end of it, it would not be St. Peter's. For 
those of us whom Nature means to keep at 
home, she provides entertainment. One man 
goes four thousand miles to Italy, and does not 
see it, he is -so short-sighted. Another is so 
far-sighted that he stays in his room and sees 
more than Italy. 

But for this very reason that it washes the 
shores of my possible Europe and Asia, the sea 
draws me constantly to itself. Before I came 
to New York, while I was still a clerk in Bos- 
ton, courting Prue, and living out of town, I 
never knew of a ship sailing for India or even 
for England and France, but I went up to the 
State House cupola or to the observatory on 
some friend's house in Roxbury, where I could 
not be interrupted, and there watched the 
•departure. 

The sails hung ready; the ship lay in the 
stream; busy little boats and puffing steamers 


PRUE AND I. 


67 


darted about it, clung to its sides, paddled 
away from it, or led the way to sea, as min- 
nows might pilot a whale. The anchor was 
slowly swung at the bow ; I could not hear the 
sailors’ song; but I knew they were singing. 
I could not see the parting friends, but I knew 
farewells were spoken. I did not share the 
confusion, although I knew what bustle there 
was, what hurry, what shouting, what creak- 
ing, what fall of ropes and iron, what sharp 
oaths, low laughs, whispers, sobs. But I was 
cool, high, separate. To me it was 

“A painted ship 
Upon a painted ocean.” 

The sails were shaken out, and the ship 
began to move. It was a fair breeze, perhaps, 
and no steamer was needed to tow her away. 
She receded down the bay. Friends turned 
back — I could not see them — and waved their 
hands, and wiped their eyes, and went home 
to dinner. Farther and farther from the ships 
at anchor, the lessening vessel became single 
and solitary upon the water. The sun sank in 
the west; but I watched her still. Every flash 
of her sails, as she tacked and turned, thrilled 
my heart. 

Yet Prue was not on board. I had never 
seen one of the passengers or the crew. I did 
not know the consignees, nor the name of the 
vessel. I had shipped no adventure, nor risked 
any insurance, nor made any bet, but my eyes 
clung to her as Ariadne’s to the fading sail of 


€8 


PRUE AND I. 


Theseus. The ship was freighted with more 
than appeared upon her papers, yet she was not 
a smuggler. She bore all there was of that 
nameless lading, yet the next ship would 
carry as much. She was freighted with fancy. 
My hopes, and wishes, and vague desires, were 
all on board. It seemed to me a treasure not 
less rich than that which filled the East India- 
man at the old dock in my boyhood. 

When, at length, the ship was a sparkle upon 
the horizon, I waved my hand in last farewell, 
I strained my eyes for a last glimpse. My 
mind had gone to sea, and had left noise 
behind. But now I heard again the multitud- 
inous murmur of the city, and went down 
rapidly, and threaded the short, narrow ^streets 
to the office. Yet, believe it, every dream of 
that day, as I watched the vessel, was written 
at night to Prue. She knew my heart had not 
sailed away. 

Those days are long past now, but still I 
walk upon the Battery and look toward the 
Narrows, and know that beyond them, separ- 
ated only by the sea, are many of whom I 
would so gladly know and so rarely hear. The 
sea rolls between us like the lapse of dusty 
ages. They trusted themselves to it, and it 
bore them away far and far as if into the past. 
Last nisrht I read of Antony, but I have not 
heard from Christopher these many months, 
and by so much farther away is he, so much 
older and more remote, than Antony. As for 
William, he is as vague as any of the shepherd 
kings of ante-Pharaonic dynasties. 


PRUE AND I. 


69 


It is the sea that has done it, it has carried 
them off and put them away upon its other 
side. It is fortunate the sea did not put them 
upon its underside. Are they hale and happy 
still? Is their hair Rray, and have they mus- 
tachios? Or have they taken to wigs and 
crutches? Are they popes or cardinals yet? 
Do they feast with Lucrezia Borgia, or preach 
red republicanism to the Council of Ten? Do 
they sing, “Behold how brightly breaks the 
morning” with Masaniello? Do they laugh at 
Ulysses and skip ashore to the Sirens? Has 
Mesrour, chief of the Eunuchs, caught them 
with Zobeide in the Caliph’s garden, or have 
they made cheesecakes without pepper? 
Friends of my youth where in your wander- 
ings have you tasted the blissful Lotus, that 
you neither come nor send us tidings? 

Across the sea also came idle rumors, as false 
reports steal into history and defile fair fame. 
Was it longer ago than yesterday that I walked 
with my cousin, then recently a widow, and 
talked with her of the countries to which she 
meant to sail? She was young, and dark-eyed, 
and wore great hoops of gold, barbaric gold, in 
her ears. The hope of Italy, the thought of 
living there had risen like a dawn in the dark- 
ness of her mind. I talked and listened by 
rapid turns. 

Was it longer ago than 5’’esterday that she told 
me of her splendid plans, how palaces tapes- 
tried with gorgeous paintings should be 
cheaply hired, and the best of teachers lead 
her children to the completest and most vari- 


70 


PRUE AND I. 


ous knowledge; how — and with her slender 
pittance! she should have a box at the opera, 
and a carriage, and liveried servants, and in 
perfect health and youth, lead a perfect life in 
a perfect climate? 

And now what do I hear? Why does a tear 
sometimes drop so audibly upon my paper, 
that Titbottom looks across with a sort of mild 
rebuking glance of inquiry, whether it is kind 
to let even a single tear fall, when an ocean of 
tears is pent up in hearts that would burst and 
overflow if but one drop should force its way 
out? Why across the sea came faint gusty 
stories, like low voices in the wind, of a clois- 
tered garden and sunny seclusion — and a life 
of unknown and unexplained luxury. What 
is this picture of a pale face showered with 
streaming black hair, and large sad eyes look- 
ing upon lovely and noble children playing in 
the sunshine — and a brow pained with thought 
straining into their destiny? Who is this 
figure, a man tall and comely, with melting 
eyes and graceful motion, who comes and goes 
at pleasure, who is not a husband, yet has the 
key of the cloistered garden? 

I do not know. They are secrets of the sea. 
The pictures pass before my mind suddenly 
and unawares, and I feel the tears rising that 
I would gladly repress. Titbottom looks at 
me, then stands by the window of the office, 
and leans his brow against the cold iron bars, 
and looks down into the little square paved 
court. I take my hat and steal out of the office 
for a few minutes, and slowly pace the hurry- 


PRUE AND I. 


71 


ing streets. Meek-eyed Alice! magnificent 
Maud ! sweet baby Lilian ! why does the sea 
imprison you so far away, when will you 
return, where do you linger? The water 
laps idly about docks — lies calm, or gayly 
heaves. Why does it bring me doubts and 
fears now, that brought such bounty of beauty 
in the days long gone? 

I remember that the day when my dark 
haired cousin, with hopes of barbaric gold in 
her ears, sailed for Italy, was quarter da)", and 
we balanced the books at the office. It was 
nearly noon, and in my impatience to be away, 
I had not added my columns with sufficient 
care. The inexorable hand of the office clock 
pointed sternly toward twelve, and the remorse- 
less pendulum ticked solemnly to noon. 

To a man whose pleasures are not many, and 
rather small, the loss of such an event as say- 
ing farewell and wishing godspeed to a friend 
going to Europe, is a great loss. It was so to 
me, especially, because there was always more 
to me, in every departure, than the parting 
and the farewell. I was gradually renouncing 
this pleasure, as I saw small prospect of ending 
before noon, when Titbottom, after looking at 
me a moment, came to my side of the desk, 
and said: 

“I should like to finish that for you.** 

I looked at him; poor Titbottom! he had no 
friends to wish godspeed upon any journey. I 
quietly wiped my pen, took down my hat, and 
went out. It was in the days of sail packets 
and less regularity, when going to Europe was 


72 


PRUE AND I. 


more of an epoch in life. How gayly my cousin 
stood upon the deck and detailed to me her . 
plan ! How merrily the children stouted and 
sang ! How long I held my cousin’s little hand 
in mine, and gazed into her great eyes, remem- 
bering that they would see and touch the things 
that were invisible to me forever, but all the 
more precious and fair! She kissed me — I was 
younger then — there were tears, I remember, 
and prayers, and promises, a waving handker- 
chief — a fading sail. 

It was only the other day that I saw another 
parting of the same kind. I was not a principal, 
only a spectator; but so fond am I of sharing, 
afar off, as it were, and unseen, the sympa- 
thies of human beings, that I cannot avoid 
often going to the dock upon steamer-days, and 
giving myself to that pleasant and melancholy 
observation. There is always a crowd, but this 
day it was almost impossible to advance through 
the masses of people. The eager faces hurried 
by; a constant stream poured up the gang- 
way into the steamer, and the upper deck, to 
which I gradually made my way, was crowded 
with the passengers and their friends. 

There was one group upon which my eyes 
first fell, and upon which my memory lingers. 

A glance, brilliant as daybreak — a voice, 

“Her voice’s music — call it the well’s bubbling, the 
bird’s warble,” 

a goddess girdled with flowers, and smiling 
farewell upon a circle of worshipers, to each 
one of whom that gracious calmness made the 


PRUE AND I. 


73 


smile sweeter, and the farewell more sad — 
other figures,' other flowers, an angel face — all 
these I saw in that group as I was swayed up 
and down the deck by the eager swarm of 
people. The hour came, and I went on shore 
with the rest. The plank was drawn away — 
the captain raised his hand — the huge steamer 
slowly moved — a cannon was fired — the ship 
was gone. 

The sun sparkled upon the water as they 
sailed away. In five minutes the steamer was 
as much separated from the shore as if it had 
been at sea a thousand years. 

I leaned against a post upon the dock and 
looked around. Ranged upon the edge of the 
wharf stood that band of worshipers, waving 
handkerchiefs and straining their eyes to see the 
last smile of farewell — did any eager selfish eye 
hope to see a tear? They to whom the hand- 
kerchiefs were waved stood high upon the 
stern, holding flowers. Over them hung the 
great flag, raised by the gentle wind into the 
graceful folds of a canopy — say rather a gor- 
geous gonfalon waved over the triumphant 
departure, over that supreme youth, and 
bloom, and beauty, going out across the mystic 
ocean to carry a finer charm and more human 
splendor into those realms of my imagination 
beyond the sea. 

“You will return, O youth and beauty!” I 
said to my dreaming and foolish self, as I con- 
templated those fair figures, “richer than 
Alexander with Indian spoils. All that his- 
toric association, that copious civilization, those 


74 


PRUE AND I. 


grandeurs and graces of art, that variety and 
picturesqueness of life, will mellow and deepen 
your experience even as time silently touches 
those old pictures into a more persuasive and 
pathetic beauty, and as this increasing sum- 
mer sheds ever softer luster upon the land- 
scape. You will return conquerors and not 
conquered. You will bring Europe, even as 
Aurelian brought Zenobia captive, to deck 
your homeward triumph. 1 do not wonder 
that these clouds break away, I do not wonder 
that the sun presses out and floods all the air, 
and land, and water, with light that graces 
with happy omens your stately farewell.*' 

But if my faded face looked after them with 
such earnest and longing emotion — I, a soli- 
tary old man, unknown to those fair beings, 
and standing apart from that band of lovers, 
yet in that moment bound more closely to 
them than they knew — how was it with those 
whose hearts sailed away with that youth and 
beauty? I watched them closely from behind 
my post. I knew that life had paused with 
them ; that the world stood still. I knew that 
the long, long summer would be only a yearn- 
ing regret. I knew that each asked himsel: 
the mournful question, “Is this parting typical 
— this slow, sad sweet recession?" And 1 knew 
that they did not care to ask whether they 
should meet again, nor dare to contemplate the 
chances of the sea. 

The steamer swept on, she was near Staten 
Island, and a final gun boomed far and low 
across the water. The crowd was dispersing, 


PRUE AND I. 


75 


but the little group remained. Was it not all 
Hood had sung? 

“1 saw thee, lovely Inez, 

Descend along the shore 
With bands of noble gentlemen, 

And banners waved before ; 

And gentle youths and maidens gay. 

And snowy plumes they wore ; 

It would have been a beauteous dream. 

If it had been no more!” 

‘‘O youth!” I said to them without speak- 
ing, ‘'be it gently said, as it is solemnly 
thought, should they return no more, yet in 
your memories the high hour of their loveli- 
ness is forever enshrined. Should they come 
no more they never will be old, nor changed, 
to you. You will wax and wane, you will 
suffer, and struggle, and grow old; but this 
summer vision will smile, immortal, upon your 
lives, and those fair faces shall shed, forever, 
from under that slowly waving flag, hope and 
peace. * ’ 

It is so elsewhere; it is the tenderness of 
Nature. Long, long ago we lost our first-born, 
Prue and I. Since then, we have grown older 
and our children with us. Change comes, and 
grief, perhaps, and decay. We are happy, our 
children are obedient and gay. But should 
Prue live until she has lost us all, and laid us, 
gray and weary, in our graves, she will have 
always one babe in her heart. Every mother 
who has lost an infant, has gained a child of 
immortal youth. Can you find comfort here, 
lovers, whose mistress has sailed away? 


76 


PRUE AND I. 


I did not ask the question aloud, I thought it 
only, as I watched the youths, and turned 
away while they still stood gazing. One, I 
observed, climbed a post and waved his black 
hat before the whitewashed side of the shed 
over the dock, whence I supposed he would 
tumble into the water. Another had tied a 
handkerchief to the end of a somewhat baggy 
umbrella, and in the eagerness of gazing, had 
forgotten to wave it, so that it hung mourn- 
fully down, as if overpowered with grief it 
could not express. The entranced youth still 
held the umbrella aloft. It seemed to me as 
if he had struck his flag; or as if one of my 
cravats were airing in that sunlight. A negro 
carter was joking with an apple- woman at the 
entrance of the dock. The steamer was out 
of sight. 

I found that I was belated and hurried back 
to my desk. Alas! poor lovers; I wonder if 
they are watching still? Has he fallen ex- 
hausted from the post into the water? Is that 
handkerchief, bleached and rent, still pendant 
upon that somewhat baggy umbrella? 

“Youth and beauty went to Europe to-day,” 
said I to Prue, as I stirred my tea at evening. 

As I spoke, our youngest daughter brought 
me the sugar. She is just eighteen, and her 
name should be Hebe. I took a lump of sugar 
and looked at her. She had never seemed so 
lovely, and as I dropped the lump in my cup, 
I kissed her. I glanced at Prue as I did so. 
The dear woman smiled, but did not answer 
my exclamation. 


PRUE AND I. 


77 


Thus without traveling, I travel, and share 
the emotions of those I do not know. But 
sometimes the old longing comes over me as in 
the days when I timidly touched the huge East 
Indiaman, and magnetically sailed round the 
world. 

It was but a few days after the lovers and I 
waved farewell to the steamer, and while the 
lovely figures standing under the great gon- 
falon were as vivid in my mind as ever, that a 
day of premature sunny sadness, like those of 
the Indian summer, drew me away from the 
office early in the afternoon ; for fortunately it 
is our dull season now, and even Titbottom 
sometimes leaves the office by five o’clock. 
Although why he should leave it, or where he 
goes, or what he does I do not well know. 
Before I knew him, I used sometimes to meet 
him with a man whom I was afterward told 
was Bartleby, the scrivener. Even then it 
seemed to me that they rather clubbed their 
loneliness than made society for each other. 
Recently I have not seen Bartleby ; but Titbot- 
tom seems no more solitary because he is alone. 

I strolled into the Battery as I sauntered 
about. Staten Island looked so alluring, tender- 
hued with summer and melting in the haze, 
that I resolved to indulge myself in a pleasure- 
trip. It was a little selfish, perhaps, to go 
alone, but I looked at my watch, and saw that 
if I should hurry home for Prue the trip would 
be lost; then I should be disappointed, and 
she would be grieved. 

Ought I not rather (I like to begin ques- 


78 


PRUE AXD 1. 


tions, which I am goin^^ to answer affirmatively 
with ought) to take the trip and recount my 
adventures to Prue upon my return, whereby 
I should actually enjoy the excursion and the 
pleasure of telling her; while she would enjoy 
my story and be glad that I was pleased? 
Ought I wilfully to deprive us both of this 
various enjoyment by aiming at a higher, 
which, in losing, we should lose all? 

Unfortunately, just as I was triumphantly 
answering “Certainly not!“ another question 
marched into my mind, escorted by a very 
defiant ought. 

“Ought I to go when I have such a debate 
about it?“ 

But while I was perplexed, and scoffing at 
my own scruples, the ferry-bell suddenly rang, 
and answered all my questions. Involuntarily 
I hurried on board. The boat slipped from 
the dock. I went up on deck to enjoy the 
view of the city from the bay, but just as I sat 
down, and meant to have said “how beautiful!*' 
I found myself asking: 

“Ought I to have come?" 

Lost in perplexing debate, I saw little of the 
scenery of the bay ; but the remembrance of 
Prue and the gentle influence of the day 
plunged me intp a mood of pensive reverie 
which nothing tended to destroy, until we 
suddenly arrived at the landing. 

As I was stepping ashore, I was greeted by 
Mr. Bourne, who passes the summer on the 
island, and who hospit«ably asked if I were 
going his way. His way was toward the 


PRUE AND I. 


79 


southern end of the island, and I said yes. 
His pockets were full of papers and his brow 
of wrinkles; so when we reached the point 
where he should turn off, I asked him to let 
me alight, although he was very anxious to 
carry me wherever I was going. 

“I am only strolling about,” I answered, as 
I clambered carefully out of the wagon. 

“Strolling about?” asked he, in a bewildered 
manner: “do people stroll about, nowadays?” 

“Sometimes,” I answered, smiling, as I 
pulled my trousers down over my boots, for 
they had dragged up, as I stepped out of the 
wagon, “and besides, what can an old book- 
keeper do better in the dull season than stroll 
about this pleasant island, and watch the ships 
at sea?” 

Bourne looked at me with his weary eyes. 

“I’d give five thousand dollars a year for a 
dull season,” said he, “but as for strolling, 
I’ve forgotten how.” 

As he spoke, his eyes wandered dreamily 
across the fields and woods, and were fastened 
upon the distant sails. 

“It is pleasant,” he said musingly, and fell 
into silence. But I had no time to spare, so I 
wished him good afternoon. 

“I hope your wife is well,” said Bourne to 
me, as I turned away. Poor Bourne! He 
drove on alone in his wagon. 

But I made haste to the most solitary point 
upon the southern shore, and there sat, glad to 
be so near the sea. There was that warm, 
sympathetic silence in the air that gives to 


80 


PRUE AND I. 


Indian summer days almost a human tender- 
ness of feeling. A delicate haze, that seemed 
only the kindly air made visible, hung over 
the sea. The water lapped languidly among 
the rocks, and the voices of children in a boat 
beyond, rang musically, and gradually receded, 
until they were lost in the distance. 

It was some time before I was aware of the 
outline of a large ship, drawn vaguely upon 
the mist, which I supposed, at first, to be only 
a kind of mirage. But the more steadfastly 1 
gazed, the more distinct it became, and I could 
no longer doubt that I saw a stately ship lying 
at anchor, not more than half a mile from the 
land. 

“It is an extraordinary place to anchor,” I 
said to myself, “or can she be ashore?” 

There were no signs of distress; the sails 
were carefully clewed up, and there were no 
sailors in the tops nor upon the shrouds. A 
flag, of which I could not see the device or the 
nation, hung heavily at the stern, and looked 
as if it had fallen asleep. My curiosity began 
to be singularly excited. The form of the 
vessel seemed not to be permanent; but within 
a quarter of an hour, I was sure that I had 
seen half a dozen different ships. As I gazed, 

I saw no more sails nor masts, but a long 
range of oars, flashing like a golden fringe, or 
straight and stiff, like the legs of a sea- 
monster. 

“It is some bloated crab, or lobster, mag- 
nified by the mist,” I said to myself, compla- 
cently. 


PRUE AND I. 


81 


But, at the same moment, there was a con- 
centrated flashing and blazing in one spot 
among the rigging, and it was as if I saw a 
beatified ram, or, more truly, a sheepskin 
splendid as the hair of Berenice. 

“Is that the golden fleece?” I thought “But 
surely, Jason and the Argonauts have gone 
home long since. Do people go on gold-fleec- 
ing expeditions now?” I asked myself, in per- 
plexity. “Can this be a California steam- 
er?” 

How could I have thought it a steamer? 
Did I not see those sails, “thin and sere?” 
Did I not feel the melancholy of that solitary 
bark? It had a mystic aura; a boreal bril- 
liancy shimmered in its wake, for it was drift- 
ing seaward. A strange fear curdled along my 
veins. That summer sun shone cool. The 
weary, battered ship was gashed, as if gnawed 
by ice. There was terror in the air, as a 
“skinny hand so brown” waved to me from the 
deck. I lay as one bewitched. The hand of 
the ancient mariner seemed to be reaching 
for me, like the hand of death. 

Death? Why, as I was inly praying Prue’s 
forgiveness for my solitary ramble and con- 
sequent demise, a glance like the fulness of 
summer splendor gushed over me; the odor of 
flowers and of eastern gums made all the 
atmosphere. I breathed the orient, and lay 
drunk with balm, while that strange ship, a 
golden galley now, with glittering draperies 
festooned with flowers, paced to the measured 
beat of oars along the calm, and Cleopatra 

6 Prue and I 


82 


PRUE AND I. 


smiled alluringly from the great pageant’s 
heart. 

Was this a barge for summer waters, this 
peculiar ship I saw? It had a ruined dignity, 
a cumbrous grandeur, although its masts were 
shattered, and its sails rent. It hung preter- 
naturally still upon the sea, as if tormented 
and exhausted by long driving and drifting. 
I saw no sailors, but a great Spanish ensign 
floated over, and waved, a funereal plume. I 
knew it then. The armada was long since 
scattered; but, floating far 

“on desolate, rainy seas,** 

lost for centuries, and again restored to sight, 
here lay one of the fated ships of Spain. The 
huge galleon seemed to fill all the air, built up 
against the sky, like the gilded ships of Claude 
Lorraine against the sunset. 

But it fled, for now a black flag fluttered at 
the masthead — a long low vessel darted swiftly 
where the vast ship lay; there came a shrill 
piping whistle, the clash of cutlasses, fierce 
ringing oaths, sharp pistol cracks, the thunder 
of command, and over all the gusty yell of a 
demoniac chorus, 

“My name was Robert Kidd, when I sailed.** 

— There were no clouds longer, but under a 
serene sk}^ I saw a bark moving with festal 
pomp, thronged with grave senators in flowing 
robes, and one with ducal bonnet in the midst, 
holding a ring. The smooth bark swam upon 


PRUE AND I. 


85 


a, sea like that of southern latitudes. I saw 
the Bucentoro and the nuptials of Venice and 
the Adriatic. 

Who were those coming over the side? Who 
crowded the boats and sprang into the water^ 
men in old Spanish armor, with plumes and 
swords, and bearing a glittering cross? Who 
was he standing upon the deck with folded 
arms and gazing toward the shore, as lovers- 
on their mistresses, and martyrs upon heaven? 
Over what distant and tumultuous seas had 
this small craft escaped from other centuries 
and distant shores? What sounds of foreign 
hymns, forgotten now, were these, and what 
solemnity of debarkation? Was this grave 
form, Columbus? 

Yet these were not so Spanish as they seemed 
just now. This group of stern-faced men. 
with high peaked hats, who knelt upon the 
cold deck and looked out upon a shore which^ 
I could see by their joyless smile of satisfac- 
tion, was rough, and bare, and forbidding. In 
that soft afternoon, standing in mournful 
groups upon the small deck, why did the^ 
seem to me to be seeing the sad shores of 
wintry New England? That phantom-ship 
could not be the May Flower! 

I gazed long upon the shifting illusion. 

“If I should board this ship,’' I asked myself, 
“where should I go? whom should I meet? 
what should I see? Is not this the vessel that 
shall carry me to my Europe, my foreign 
countries, my impossible India, the Atlantis 
that 1 have lost?"' 


84 


PRUE AND I. 


As I sat staring at it I could not but wonder 
whether Bourne had seen this sail when he 
looked upon the water? Does he see such 
sights every day, because he lives down here? 
Is it not perhaps a magic yacht of his; and 
does he slip off privately after business hours 
to Venice, and Spain, and Egypt, perhaps to 
El Dorado? Does he run races with Ptolemy, 
Philopater and Hieroof Syracuse, race regattas 
•on fabulous seas? 

Why not? He is a rich man, too, and why 
should not a New York merchant do what a 
Syracuse tyrant and an Egyptian prince did? 
Has Bourne’s yacht those sumptuous cham- 
hers, like Philopater’s galley, of which the 
greater part was made of split cedar, and of 
Milesian cypress; and has he twenty doors 
put together with beams of citron- wood, with 
many ornaments? Has the roof of his cabin a 
carved golden face, and is his sail linen with 
a purple fringe? 

“I suppose it is so, ” I said to myself, as I 
looked wistfully at the ship, which began to 
glimmer and melt in the haze. 

‘Ht certainly is not a fishing smack!” I asked, 
doubtfully. 

No, it must be Bourne’s magic yacht; I was 
sure of it. I could not help laughing at poor 
old Hiero, whose cabins were divided into 
many rooms, with floors composed of mosaic 
work, of all kinds of stones tesselated. And, 
on this mosaic, the whole story of the Iliad was 
depicted in a marvelous manner. He had 
gardens “of all sorts of most wonderful beauty, 


PRUE AND 1. 


85 


enriched with all sorts of plants, and shadowed 
by roofs of lead or tiles. And, besides this, 
there were tents roofed with boughs of white 
ivy and of the vine — the roots of which derived 
their moisture from casks full of earth, and 
were watered in the same manner as the gar- 
dens. There were temples, also, with doors of 
ivory and citron-wood, furnished in the most 
exquisite manner, with pictures and statues, 
and with goblets and vases of every form and 
shape imaginable.'’ 

“Poor Bourne!” I said, “I suppose his is 
finer than Hiero’s which is a thousand years 
old. Poor Bourne! I don’t wonder that his 
eyes are weary, and that he would pay so dearly 
for a day of leisure. Dear me ! is it one of the 
prices that must be paid for wealth, the keep- 
ing up a magic yacht?” 

Involuntarily, I had asked the question aloud. 
■“The magic yacht is not Bourne’s,” answered 
a familiar voice. I looked up, and Titbottom 
stood by my side. “Do you not know that 
all Bourne’s money would not buy the yacht?” 
asked he. “He cannot even see it. And if he 
could, it would be no magic yacht to him, but 
only a battered and solitary hulk.” 

The haze blew gently away, as Titbottom 
spoke, and there lay my Spanish galleon, my 
Bucentoro, my Cleopatra’s galley, Columbus* 
Santa Maria, and the Pilgrims’ May Flower, 
an old bleaching wreck upon the beach. 

“Do you suppose any true love is in vain?” 
asked Titbottom solemnly, as he stood bare- 
headed, and the soft sunset wind played with 


86 


PRUE AND I. 


his few hairs. “Could Cleopatra smile upon 
Antony, and the moon upon Endymion, and 
the sea not love its lovers ?“ 

The fresh air breathed upon our faces as he 
spoke. I might have sailed in Hiero’s ship,. or 
in Roman galleys, had I lived centuries ago, 
and been born a nobleman. But would it be 
so sweet a remembrance, that of lying on a 
marble couch, under a golden-faced roof, and 
within doors of citron- wood and ivory, and 
sailing in that state to greet queens who are 
mummies now, as that of seeing those fair fig- 
ures standing under the great golfalon, them- 
selves as lovely as Egyptian belles, and going: 
to see more than Egypt dreamed? 

The yacht was mine, then, and not Bourne’s. 
I took Titbottom’s arm, and we sauntered 
toward the ferry. What sumptuous sultan 
was I, with this sad vizier? My languid odal- 
isque, the sea, lay at my feet as we advanced^ 
and sparkled all over with a sunset smile. 
Had I trusted myself to her arms, to be borne 
to the realms that I shall never see, or sailed 
long voyages toward Cathay, I am not sure I 
should have brought a more precious present 
to Prue, than the story of that afternoon. 

“Ought I to have gone alone?” I asked her, 
as I ended. 

“I ought not to have gone with you,” she 
replied, “for I had work to do. But how 
strange that you should see such things at 
Staten Island. I never did, Mr. Titbottom,” 
said she, turning to my deputy, whom I had 
asked to tea. 


PRUE AND I. 


87 


“Madam,’' answered Titbottom, with a kind 
of wan and quaint dignity, so that I could not 
help thinking he must have arrived in that 
stray ship from the Spanish armada, “neither 
did Mr. Bourne.” 


88 


PRUE AND I. 


TITBOTTOM’S SPECTACLES. 

“In my mind’s eye, Horatio.” 

— Hamlet. 

Prue and I do not entertain much; our 
means forbid it. In truth, other people enter- 
tain for us. We enjoy that hospitality of 
which no account is made. W e see the show, 
and hear the music, and smell the flowers, of 
great festivities, tasting, as it were, the drip- 
pings from rich dishes. 

Our own dinner service is remarkably plain, 
our dinners, even on state occasions, are 
strictly in keeping, and almost our only guest 
is Titbottom. I buy a handful of roses as I 
come up from the office, perhaps, and Prue 
arranges them so prettily in a glass dish for 
the center of the table, that, even when I have 
hurried out to see Aurelia step into her car- 
riage to go out to dine, I have thought that 
the bouquet she carried was not more beautiful 
because it was more costly. 

I grant that it was more harmonious with her 
superb beauty and her rich attire. And I have 
no doubt that if Aurelia knew the old man, 
whom she must have seen so often watching 
her, and his wife, who ornaments her sex with 
as much sweetness, although with less splen- 
dor, than Aurelia herself, she would also 


PRUE AND I. 


89 


acknowledge that the nosegay of roses was as 
fine and fit upon their table, as her own 
sumptuous bouquet is for herself. I have so 
much faith in the perception of that lovely 
lady 

It is my habit — I hope I may say, my nature 
— to believe the best of people, rather than 
the worst. If I thought that all this sparkling 
setting of beauty, this fine fashion — these 
blazing jewels, and lustrous silks, and airy 
gauzes, embellished with gold-threaded em- 
broidery, and wrought in a thousand exquisite 
elaborations, so that I cannot see one of those 
lovely girls pass me by without thanking God 
for the vision — if I thought that this was all, 
and that, underneath her lace flounces and 
diamond bracelets, Aurelia was a sullen, sel- 
fish woman, than I should turn sadly home- 
ward, for I should see that her jewels were 
flashing scorn upon the object they adorned, 
that her laces were of a more exquisite loveli- 
ness than the woman whom they merely 
touched with a superficial grace. It would be 
like a gayly decorated mausoleum, bright to 
see, but silent and dark within. 

“Great excellences, my dear Prue,“ I some- 
times allow myself to say, “lie concealed in the 
depths of character, like pearls at the bottom 
of the sea. Under the laughing, glancing sur- 
face, how little they are suspected ! Perhaps 
love is nothing else than the sight of them by 
one person. Hence every man’s mistress is 
apt to be an enigma to everybody else, 

“I have no doubt that when Aurelia is en- 


90 


PRUE AND I. 


gaged, people will say she is a most admirable 
girl, certainly; but they cannot understand 
why any man should be in love with her. As 
if it were at all necessary that they should ! 
And her lover, like a boy who finds a pearl in 
the public street, and wonders as much as that 
others did not see it as that he did, will trem- 
ble until he knows his passion is returned ; 
feeling, of course, that the whole world must 
be in love with this paragon, who cannot pos- 
sibly smile upon anything so unworthy as he. 

“I hope, therefore, my dear Mrs. Prue,'* I 
continue, and my wife looks up, with pleased 
pride, from her work, as if I were such an 
irresistible humorist, “you will allow me to 
believe that the depths may be calm, although 
the surface is dancing. If you tell me that 
Aurelia is but a giddy girl, I shall believe 
that you think so. But I shall know, all the 
while, what profound dignity, and sweetness, 
and peace, lie at the foundation of her char- 
acter. 

I say such things to Titbottom, during the 
dull season at the office. And I have known 
him sometimes to reply, with a kind of dry, 
sad humor, not as if he enjoyed the joke, but 
as if the joke must be made, that he saw no 
reason why I should be dull because the season 
was so. 

“And what do I know of Aurelia, or any 
other girl?** he says to me with that abstracted 
air; “I, whose Aurelias were of another 
century, and another zone. ” 

Then he falls into a silence which it seems 


PRUE AND I. 


91 


quite profane to interrupt. But as we sit upon 
our high stools, at the desk, opposite each 
other, I leaning upon my elbows, and looking 
at him, he, with sidelong face, glancing out of 
the window, as if it commanded a boundless 
landscape, instead of a dim, dingy office 
court, I cannot refrain from saying : 

“Well!” 

He turns slowly, and I go chatting on — a lit- 
tle too loquacious, perhaps, about those young 
girls. But I know that Titbottom regards 
such an excess as venial, for his sadness is so 
sweet that 3^ou could believe it the reflection 
of a smile from long, long years ago. 

One day, after I had been talking for a long 
time, and we had put up our books, and were 
preparing to leave, he stood for some time by 
the window gazing with a drooping intentness, 
as if he really saw something more than the 
dark court, and said slowly : 

“Perhaps you would have different impres- 
sions of things, if you saw them through my 
spectacles. ” 

There was no change in his expression. He 
still looked from the window, and I said : 

“Titbottom, I did not know that you used 
glasses. I have never seen you wearing spec- 
tacles. ’ ’ 

“No, I don't often wear them. I am not 
very fond of looking through them. But 
sometimes an irresistible necessity compels me 
to put them on, and I cannot help seeing.” 

Titbottom sighed. 

“Is it so grievous a fate to see?” inquired I. 


92 


PRUE AND I. 


‘‘Yes; through my spectacles,” he said, 
turning slowly, and looking at me with wan 
solemnity. 

It grew dark as we stood in the office talk- 
ing, and, taking our hats, we went out 
together. The narrow street of business was 
deserted. The heavy iron shutters were 
gloomily closed over the windows. From one 
or two offices struggled the dim gleam of an 
early candle, by whose light some perplexed 
accountant sat belated, and hunting for his 
error. A careless clerk passed, whistling. 
But the great tide of life had ebbed. We 
heard its roar far away, and the sound stole 
into that silent street like the murmur of the 
ocean into an inland dell. 

“You will come and dine with us, Titbot- 
tom?” 

He assented by continuing to walk with me, 
and I think we were both glad when we 
reached the house, and Prue came to meet hs, 
saying: 

“Do you know I hoped you would bring Mr. 
Titbottom to dine?” 

Titbottom smiled gently, and I answered : 

“He might have brought his spectacles 
with him, and have been a happier man for it. ” 

Prue looked a little puzzled. 

“My dear,” I said, “you must know that our 
friend Mr. Titbottom, is the happy possessor 
of a pair of wonderful spectacles. I have 
never seen them, indeed ; and, from what he 
says, I should be rather afraid of being seen 
by them. Most short-sighted persons are very 


PRUE AND I. 


93 


glad to have the help of glasses; but Mr. Tit- 
bottom seems to find very little pleasure in 
his, ’ ’ 

“It is because they make him too far- 
sighted, perhaps, “ interrupted Prue, quietly, 
as she took the silver soup ladle from the side- 
board. 

We sipped our wine after dinner, and Prue 
took her work. Can a man be too far-sighted? 
I did not ask the question aloud. The very 
tone in which Prue had spoken, convinced me 
that he might. 

“At least, “ I said, “Mr. Titbottom will not 
refuse to tell us the history of his mysterious 
spectacles. I have known plenty of magic in 
eyes (and I glanced at the tender blue eyes of 
Prue), but I have not heard of any enchanted 
glasses. ’ ’ 

“Yet you must have seen the glass in which 
your wife looks every morning, and, I take it, 
that glass must be daily enchanted,” said Tit^ 
bottom, with a bow of quaint respect to my 
wife. 

I do not think I have seen such a blush upon 
Prue’s cheek since — well, since a great man}^ 
years ago. 

“I will gladly tell you the history of my 
spectacles,” began Titbottom. “It is very 
simple; and I am not at all sure that a great 
many other people have not a pair of the same 
kind. I have never, indeed, heard of them by 
the gross, like those of our young friend, 
Moses, the son of the Vicar of Wakefield. In 
fact, I think a gross would be quite enough to 


94 


PRUE AND I. 


supply the world. It is a kind of article for 
which the demand does not increase with use. 
If we should all wear spectacles like mine, we 
should never smile any more. Or — I am not 
quite sure — we should all be very happy.” 

“Avery important difference,” said Prue, 
counting her stitches. 

“You know my grandfather Titbottom was 
a West Indian. A large proprietor, and an 
easy man, he basked in the tropical sun, lead- 
ing his quiet, luxurious life. He lived much 
alone, and was what people called eccentric — 
by which I understand, that he was very much 
himself, and refusing the influence of other 
people, they had their revenges, and called 
him names. It is a habit not exclusively trop- 
ical. I think I have seen the same thing even 
in this city. 

“But he was greatly beloved — my bland and 
bountiful grandfather. He was so large- 
hearted and open-handed. He was so friendly 
and thoughtful and genial that even his jokes 
had the air of graceful benedictions. He did 
not seem to grow old, and he was one of those 
who never appear to have been very young. 
He flourished in a perennial maturity, an im- 
mortal middle age. 

“My grandfather lived upon one of the small 
islands — St. Kitt’s, perhaps — and his domain 
extended to the sea. His house, a rambling 
West Indian mansion, was surrounded with 
deep, spacious piazzas, covered with luxurious 
lounges, among which one capacious chair was 
his peculiar seat. They tell me, he used 


PRUE AND I. 


95 


sometimes to sit there for the whole day, his 
great soft, brown eyes fastened upon the sea, 
watching the specks of sails that flashed upon 
the horizon, while the evanescent expressions 
chased each other over his placid face as if it 
reflected the calm and changing sea before 
him. His morning costume was an ample 
dressing-gown of gorgeously flowered silk, and 
his morning was very apt to last all day. He 
rarely read; but he would pace the great 
piazza for hours, with his hands buried in the 
pockets of his dressing-gown, and an air of 
sweet reverie, which any book must be a very 
entertaining one to produce. 

^‘Society, of course, he saw little. There 
was some slight apprehension that, if he were 
bidden to social entertainments, he might for- 
get his coat, or arrive without some other 
essential part of his dress ; and there is a sly 
tradition in the Titbottom family, that once, 
having been invited to a ball in honor of a new 
governor of the island, my grandfather Tit- 
bottom sauntered into the hall towards mid- 
night, wrapped in the gorgeous flowers of his 
dressing-gown, and with his hands buried in 
the pockets, as usual. There was- great excite- 
ment among the guests, and immense depreca- 
tion of gubernatorial ire. Fortunately, it hap- 
pened that the governor and my grandfather 
were old friends, and there was no offense. 
But, as they were conversing together, one of 
the distressed managers cast indignant glances 
at the brilliant costume of my grandfather, 
who summoned him, and asked courteously: 


96 


PRUE AND I. 


‘Did you invite me, or my coat?’ 

“ ‘You, in a proper coat,’ replied the man- 
ager. 

“The governor smiled approvingly, and 
looked at my grandfather. 

“ ‘My friend,’ said he to the manager, T beg 
your pardon, I forgot. ’ 

“The next day, my grandfather was seen 
promenading in full ball-dress along the 
streets of the little town. 

“ ‘They ought to know,’ said he, ‘that I 
have a proper coat, and that not contempt, nor 
poverty, but forgetfulness, sent me to a ball 
in my dressing-gown. ’ 

“He did not much frequent social festivals 
after this failure, but he always told the story 
with satisfaction and a quiet smile. 

“To a stranger, life upon those little islands 
is uniform even to weariness. But the old 
native dons, like my grandfather, ripen in the 
prolonged sunshine like the turtle upon the 
Bahama banks, nor know of existence more 
desirable. Life in the tropics, I take to be a 
placid torpidity. 

“During the long, warm mornings of nearly 
half a century, my grandfather Titbottom had 
sat in his dressing-gown, and gazed at the sea. 
But one calm June day, as he slowly paced the 
piazza after breakfast, his dreamy glance was 
arrested by a little vessel, evidently nearing 
the shore. He called for his spyglass, and, 
surveying the craft, saw that she came from 
the neighboring island. She glided smoothly, 
slowly, over the summer sea. The warm morn- 



“ But as we sit upon our high stools.” — Page 91 , 

Ti ue and 1. 





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PRUE AND 1. 


97 


ing air was sweet with perfumes, and silent with 
heat. The sea sparkled languidly, and the 
brilliant blue sky hung cloudlessly over. Scores 
of little island vessels had my grandfather seen 
coming over the horizon, and cast anchor in 
the port. Hundreds of summer mornings had 
the white sails flashed and faded like vague 
faces through forgotten reams. But this time 
he laid down the spyglass, and leaned against a 
column of the piazza, and watched the vessel 
with an intentness that he could not explain. 
She came nearer and nearer, a graceful spec- 
ter in the dazzling morning. 

‘‘ ‘Decidedly, I must step down and see about 
that vessel, ’ said my grandfather Titbottom. 

“He gathered his ample dressing-gown 
about him, and stepped from the piazza, with 
no other protection from the sun than the lit- 
tle smoking-cap upon his head. His face wore 
a calm, beaming smile, as if he loved the whole 
world. He was not an old man ; but there 
was almost a patriarchal pathos in his expres- 
sion, as he sauntered along in the sunshine to- 
ward the shore. A group of idle gazers was 
collected, to watch the arrival. The little ves- 
sel furled her sails, and drifted slowly land- 
ward, and, as she was of very light draft, she 
came close to the shelving shore. A long 
plank was put out from her side, and the 
debarkation commenced. 

“My grandfather Titbottom stood looking 
on, to see the passengers as they passed. 
There were but a few of them, and mostly 
traders from the neighboring island. But sud- 

7 Prue and I 


98 


PRUE AND I. 


denly the face of a young girl appeared over 
the side of the vessel, and she stepped upon 
the plank to descend. My grandfather Tit- 
bottom instantly advanced, and, moving 
briskly, reached the top of the plank at the 
same moment, and with the old tassel of his 
cap flashing in the sun, and one hand in the 
pocket of his dressing-gown, with the other he 
handed the young lady carefully down the 
plank. That young lady was afterward my 
grandmother Titbottom. 

“For, over the gleaming sea which he had 
watched so long, and which seemed thus to 
reward his patient gaze, came his bride that 
sunny morning. 

“ ‘Of course we are happy,* he used to say 
to her, after they were married; ‘For you are 
the gih of the sun I have loved so long and so 
well. * And my grandfather Titbottom would 
lay his hand so tenderly upon the golden hair 
of his 5^oung bride, that you could fancy him a 
devout Parsee, caressing sunbeams. 

“There were endless festivities upon occa- 
sion of the marriage ; and my grandfather did 
not go to one of them in his dressing-gown. 
The gentle sweetness of his wife melted every 
heart into love and sympathy. He was much 
older than she, without doubt. But age, as 
he used to say with a smile of immortal youth, 
is a matter of feeling, not of years. 

“And if, sometimes as she sat by his side on 
the piazza, her fancy looked through her eyes 
upon that summer sea, and saw a younger 
lover, perhaps some one of those graceful and 


PRUE AND I. 


99 


glowing heroes who occupy the foreground of 
all young maiden’s visions by the sea, yet she 
could not find one more generous and gracious, 
nor fancy one more worthy and loving than 
my grandfather Titbottom. 

“And if, in the moonlit midnight, while he 
lay calmly sleeping, she leaned out of the win- 
dow, and sank into vague reveries of sweet pos- 
sibility, and watched the gleaming path of the 
moonlight upon the water, until the dawn 
glided over it — it was only that mood of name- 
less regret and longing, which underlies all hu- 
man happiness; or it was the vision of that life 
of cities and the world, which she had never 
seen, but of which she had often read, and 
which looked very fair and alluring across the 
sea, to a girlish imagination, which knew that 
it should never see that reality. 

“These West Indian years were the great 
days of the family,” said Titbottom, with an 
air of majestic and regal regret, pausing, and 
musing, in our little parlor, like a late Stuart 
in exile remembering England. 

Prue raised her eyes from her work, and 
looked at him with subdued admiration ; for I 
have observed that, like the rest of her sex, 
she has a singular sympathy with the repre- 
sentative of a reduced family. 

Perhaps it is their finer perception, which 
leads these tender-hearted women to recog- 
nize the divine right of social superiority so 
much more readily than we ; and yet, much as 
Titbottom was enhanced in my wife’s admira- 
tion by the discovery that his dusky sadness of 


100 


PRUE AND I. 


nature and expression was, as it were, the ex- 
piring gleam and late twilight of ancestral 
splendors, I doubt if Mr. Bourne would have 
preferred him for bookkeeper a moment sooner 
upon that account. In truth, I have observed, 
downtown, that the fact of your ancestors 
doing nothing, is not considered good proof that 
you can do anything. 

But Prue and her sex regard sentiment more 
than action, and I understand easily enough 
why she is never tired of hearing me read of 
Prince Charlie. If Titbottom had been only a 
little younger, a little handsomer, a little 
more gallantly dressed — in fact, a little more 
of a Prince Charlie, I am sure her eyes would 
not have fallen again upon her work so tran- 
quilly, as he resumed his story. 

“I can remember my grandfather Titbottom, 
although I was a very young child, and he was 
a very old man. My young mother and grand- 
mother are very distinct figures in my mem- 
ory, ministering to the old gentleman, wrapped 
in his dressing-gown, and seated upon the pi- 
azza. I remember his white hair, and his calm 
smile, and how, not long before he died, he 
called me to him, and laying his hand upon my 
head, said to me: 

“ ‘My child, the world is not this great sunny 
piazza, nor life the fairy stories which the 
women tell you here, as you sit in their laps. 
I shall soon be gone, but I want to leave with 
you some memento of my love for you, and I 
know of nothing more valuable than these 
spectacles, which your grandmother brought 


PRUE AND I. 


101 


from her native land, when she arrived here 
one fine summer morning, long ago. I cannot 
tell whether, when you grow older, you will 
regard them as a gift of the greatest value, or 
as something that you had been happier never 
to have possessed. ’ 

“ ‘But grandpapa, I am not short-sighted.’ 

“ ‘My son, are you not human?’ said the old 
gentleman; and how I shall ever forget the 
thoughtful sadness with which, at the same 
time, he handed me the spectacles. 

“Instinctively I put them on, and looked at 
my grandfather. But I saw no grandfather, 
no piazza, no fiowered dressing-gown; I saw 
only a luxuriant palm tree, waving broadly 
over a tranquil landscape ; pleasant hom^s clus- 
tered around it; gardens teeming with fruit 
and flowers; flocks quietly feeding; birds 
wheeling and chirping. I heard children’s 
voices, and the low lullaby of happy mothers. 
The sound of cheerful singing came wafted 
from distant fields upon the light breeze. Gold- 
en harvests glistened out of sight, and I 
caught their rustling whispers of prosperity. 
A warm, mellow atmosphere bathed the 
whole. 

“I have seen copies of the landscapes of the 
Italian painter Claude, which seemed to me 
faint reminiscences of that calm and happy 
visiom But all this peace and prosperity 
seemed to flow from the spreading palm as 
from a fountain. 

“I do not know how long I looked, but I 
had, apparently, no power, as I had no will, to 


102 


PRUE AND I. 


remove the spectacles! What a wonderful 
island must Nevis be, thought I, if people 
carry such pictures in their pockets only by 
buying a pair of spectacles! What wonder that 
my dear grandmother Titbottom has lived such 
a placid life, and has blessed us all with her 
sunny temper, when she has lived surrounded 
by such images of peace! 

“My grandfather died. But still, in the 
warm morning sunshine upon the piazza, I 
felt his placid presence, and as I crawled into 
his great chair, and drifted on in reverie 
through the still tropical day, it was as if his 
soft dreamy eye had passed into my soul. My 
grandmother cherished his memory with ten- 
der regret. A violent passion of grief for his 
lose was no more possible than for the pensive 
decay of the year. 

“We have no portrait of him, but I see al- 
ways, when I remember him, that peaceful 
and luxuriant palm. And I think that to have 
known one good old man — one man who, 
through the chances and rubs of a long life, 
has carried his heart in his hand, like a palm 
branch, waving all discords into peace, helps 
our faith in God, in ourselves, and in each 
other, more than many sermons. I hardly 
know whether to be grateful to my grandfather 
for the spectacles; and yet when I remember 
that it is to them I owe the pleasant image 
of him which I cherish, I seem to myself sadly 
ungrateful. 

“Madam, “ said Titbottom to Prue, sol- 
emnly, “my memory is a long and gloomy gal- 


PRUE AND I. 


103 


lery, and only remotely, at its farther end, do 
I see the glimmer of soft sunshine, and only 
there are the pleasant pictures hung. They 
seem to me very happy along whose gallery 
the sunlight streams to their very feet, striking 
all the pictured walls into unfading splen- 
dor. ’ ’ 

Prue had laid her work in her lap, and as 
Titbottom paused a moment, and I turned to- 
ward her, I found her mild eyes fastened upon 
my face, and glistening with many tears. I 
knew that the tears meant that she felt herself 
to be one of those who seemed to Titbottom 
very happy. 

“Misfortunes of many kinds came heavily 
upon the family after the head was gone. The 
great house was relinquished. My parents 
were both dead, my grandmother had entire 
charge of me. But from the moment that I 
received the gift of the spectacles, I could not 
resist their fascination, and I withdrew into 
myself, and became a solitary boy. There 
were not many companions for me of my own 
age, and they gradually left me, or, at least, 
had not a hearty sympathy with me, for, if 
they teased me, I pulled out my spectacles and 
surveyed them so seriously that they acquired 
a kind of awe of me, and evidently regarded 
my grandfather’s gift as a concealed magical 
weapon which might be dangerously drawn 
upon them at any moment. Whenever, in our 
games, there were quarrels and high words, 
and I began to feel about my dress and to wear 
a grave look, they all took the alarm, and 


104 


PRUE AND I. 


shouted, ‘Look out for Titbottom’s spectacles,' 
and scattered like a flock of scared sheep. 

“Nor could I wonder at it. For, at first, be- 
fore they took the alarm, I saw strange sights 
when I looked at them through the glasses. 

“If two were quarreling about a marble or a 
ball, I had only to go behind a tree where I 
was concealed and look at them leisurely. 
Then the scene changed, and it was no longer 
a green meadow with boys playing, but a spot 
which I did not recognize, and forms that 
made me shudder, or smile. It was not a big 
boy bullying a little one, but a young wolf 
with glistening teeth and a lamb cowering be- 
fore him ; or, it was a dog faithful and famish- 
ing — or a star going slowly into eclipse — or a 
rainbow fading— or a flower blooming — or a 
sun rising — or a waning moon. 

“The revelations of the spectacles deter- 
mined my feeling for the boys, and for all 
whom I saw through them. No shyness, nor 
awkwardness, nor silence, could separate me 
from those who looked lovely as lilies to my 
illuminated eyes. But the vision made me 
afraid. If I felt myself warmly drawn to any 
one, I struggled with the fierce desire of see- 
ing him through the spectacles, for I feared to 
find him something else than I fancied. I 
longed to enjoy the luxury of ignorant feeling, 
to love without knowing, to float like a leaf 
upon the eddies of life, drifted now to a sunny 
point, now to a solemn shade— now over glit- 
tering ripples, now over gleaming calms — and. 


PRUE AND I. 


105 


not to determined ports, a trim vessel with an 
inexorable rudder. 

“But sometimes, mastered after long strug- 
gles, as if the unavoidable condition of owning 
the spectacles were using them, I seized them 
and sauntered into the little town. Putting 
them to my eyes, I peered into the houses and 
at the people who passed me. Here sat a 
family at breakfast, and I stood at the window 
looking in. O motley meal! fantastic vision ! 
The good mother saw her lord sitting opposite, 
a grave, respectable being, eating muffins. 
But I saw only a bank-bill, more or less crum- 
bled and tattered, marked with a larger or less- 
er figure. If a sharp wind blew suddenly, I 
saw it tremble and flutter ; it was thin, flat, 
impalpable. I removed my glasses, and looked 
with my eyes at the wife. I could have smiled 
to see the humid tenderness with which she 
regarded her strange vis-a-vis. Is life only a 
game of blindman’s-buff? of droll cross-pur- 
poses? 

“Or I put them on again, and then looked at 
the wives. How many stout trees I saw — how 
many tender flowers — how many placid pools; 
yes, and how man little streams winding out of 
sight, shriking before the large, hard, round 
eyes opposite, and slipping off into solitude 
and shade, with a low, inner song for their 
own solace. 

“In many houses I thought to see angels, 
nymphs, or, at least, women, and could only 
find broom sticks, mops, or kettles, hurrying 
about, rattling and tinkling, in a state of shrill 


m 


PRUE AND I. 


activity. I made calls upon elegant ladies, and 
after I had enjoyed the gloss of silk, and the 
delicacy of lace, and the glitter of jewels, I 
slipped on my spectacles, and saw a peacock’s 
feather, flounced, and furbelowed, and flutter- 
ing ; or an iron rod, thin, sharp, and hard ; nor 
could I possibly mistake the movement of the 
drapery for any flexibility of the thing draped. 

“Or, mysteriously chilled, I saw a statue of 
perfect form, or flowing movement, it might 
be alabaster, or bronze, or marble — but sadly 
often it was ice; and I knew that after it had 
shone a little, and frozen a few eyes with its 
despairing perfection, it could not be put away 
in the niches of palaces for ornament and proud 
family tradition, like the alabaster, or bronze, 
or marble statues, but would melt and shrink, 
and fall coldly away in colorless and useless 
water, be absorbed in the earth and utterly for- 
gotten. 

“But the true sadness was rather in seeing 
those who, not having the spectacles, thought 
that the iron rod was flexible, and the ice stat- 
ue warm. I saw man a gallant heart, which 
seemed to me brave and loyal as the crusaders, 
pursuing, through days and nights, and a long 
life of devotion, the hope of lighting at least a 
smile in the cold eyes, if not a fire in the icy 
heart. I watched the earnest, enthusiastic 
sacrifice. I saw the pure resolve, the generous 
faith, the fine scorn of doubt, the impatience 
of suspicion. I watched the race, the ardor, 
the glory of devotion. Through those strange 
spectacles how often I saw the noblest heart 


PRUE AND 1. 


107 


renouncing all other hope, all other ambition, 
all other life, than the possible love of some 
one of those statues. 

“Ah! me, it was terrible, but they had not 
the love to give. The face was so polished 
and smooth, because there was no sorrow in 
the heart — and drearily, often, no heart to be 
touched. I could not wonder that the noble 
heart of devotion was broken, for it had dashed 
itself against a stone. I wept, until my spec- 
tacles were dimmed, for those hopeless lovers ; 
but there was a pang beyond tears for those 
icy statues. 

“Still a boy, I was thus too much a man in 
knowledge— I did not comprehend the sights I 
was compelled to see. I used to tear my glass- 
es away from my eyes, and, frightened at my- 
self, run to escape my own consciousness. 
Reaching the small house where we then 
lived, I plunged into my grandmother’s room, 
and throwing myself upon the floor, buried 
my face in her lap and sobbed myself to sleep 
with premature grief. 

“But when I awakened, and felt her cool 
hand upon my hot forehead, and heard the low 
sweet song, or the gentle story, or the tenderly 
told parable from the Bible, with which she 
tried to soothe me, I could not resist the mys- 
tic fascination that lured me, as I lay in her 
lap, to steal a glance at her through the spec- 
tacles. 

“Pictures of the Madonna have not her rare 
and pensive beauty. Upon the tranquil little 
islands her life had been eventless, and all the 


108 


PRUE AND I. 


fine possibilities of her nature were like flow- 
ers that never bloomed. Placid were all her 
years; yet I have read of no heroine, of no 
woman great in sudden crises, that it did not 
seem to me she might have been. The wife 
and widow of a man who loved his home bet- 
ter than the homes of others, I have yet heard 
of no queen, no belle, no imperial beauty, 
whom in grace, and brilliancy, and persuasive 
courtesy she might not have surpassed. 

“Madam,” said Titbottom to my wife, whose 
heart hung upon his story; “your husband’s 
young friend, Aurelia, wears sometimes a 
camelia in her hair, and no diamond in the 
ball room seems so costly as that perfect flow- 
er, which women envy, and for whose least 
and withered petal men sigh ; yet, in the trop- 
ical solitudes of Brazil, how many a camelia 
bud drops from the bush that no eye has ever 
seen, which, had it flowered and been noticed, 
would have gilded all hearts with its memory. 

“When I stole these furtive glances at my 
grandmother, half-fearing that they were 
wrong, I saw only a calm lake, whose shores 
were low, and over which the sun hung un- 
broken, so that the least star was clearly re- 
flected. It had an atmosphere of solemn twi- 
light tranquillity, and so completely did its un- 
ruffled surface blend with the cloudless, star- 
studded sky, that, when I looked through my 
spectacles at my grandmother, the vision 
seemed to me all heaven and stars. 

“Yet, as I gazed and gazed, I felt what 
stately cities might well have been built upon 


PRUE AND I. 


109 


those shores, and have flashed prosperity over 
the calm, like coruscations of pearls. I dreamed 
of gorgeous fleets, silken-sailed, and blown by 
perfumed winds, drifting over those depthless 
waters and through those spacious skies. I 
gazed upon the twilight, the inscrutable si- 
lence, like a God-fearing discoverer upon a new 
and vast sea bursting upon him through forest 
glooms, and in the fervor of whose impas- 
sioned gaze, a milennial and poetic world 
arises, and man need no longer die to be 
happy. 

“My companions naturally deserted me, for 
I had grown wearily grave and abstracted; 
and, unable to resist the allurements of my 
spectacles, I was constantly lost in the world, of 
which those companions were part, yet of 
which they knew nothing. 

“I grew cold and hard, almost morose; peo- 
ple seemed to me so blind and unreasonable. 
They did the wrong thing. They called green, 
yellow; and black, white. Young men said of 
a girl. ‘What a lovely, simple creature!’ I 
looked, and there was only a glistening wisp 
of straw, dry and hollow. Or they said, ‘What 
a cold, proud beauty!’ I looked, and lo! a 
Madonna, whose heart held the world. Or 
they said, ‘What a wild, giddy girl!’ and I saw 
a glancing, dancing mountain stream, pure as 
the virgin snows whence it flowed, singing 
through sun and shade, over pearls and gold 
dust, slipping along unstained by weed or rain, 
or heavy foot of cattle, touching the flowers 
with a dewy kiss — a beam of grace, a happy 


no 


PRUE AND I. 


song, a line of light, in the dim and troubled 
landscape. 

'‘My grandmother sent me to school, but 1 
looked at the master, and saw that he was a 
smooth round ferule, or an improper noun, or 
a vulgar fraction, and refused to obey him. 
Or he was a piece of string, a rag, a willow 
wand, and I had a contemptuous pity. But 
one was a well of cool, deep water, and look- 
ing suddenly in, one day, I saw the stars. 

“That one gave me all my schooling. With 
him I used to walk by the sea, and, as we 
strolled and the waves plunged in long legions 
before us, I looked at him through the spec- 
tacles, and as his eyes dilated with the bound- 
less view, and his chest heaved with an impos- 
sible desire, I saw Xerxes and his army, tossed 
and glittering, rank upon rank, multitude 
upon multitude, out of sight, but ever regu- 
larly advancing, and with confused roar of 
ceaseless music, prostrating themselves in 
abject homage. Or, as with arms outstretched 
and hair streaming on the wind, he chanted 
full lines of the resounding Iliad, I saw Homer 
pacing the .^gean sands of the Greek sunsets 
of forgotten times. - 

“My grandmother died, and 1 was thrown 
into the world without resources, and with no 
capital but my spectacles. I tried to find em- 
ployment, but everybody was shy of me. There 
was a vague suspicion that I was either a little 
crazed, or a good deal in league with the 
prince of darkness. My companions, who 
would persist in calling a piece of painted 


PRUE AND I. 


Ill 


muslin, a fair and fragrant flower, had no 
difficulty; success waited for them around 
every corner, and arrived in every ship. 

“I tried to teach, for I loved children. But 
if anything excited a suspicion of my pupils, 
and putting on my spectacles, I saw that I was 
fondling a snake, or smelling at a bud with a 
worm in it, I sprang up in horror and ran 
away; or, if it seemed to me through the 
glasses, that a cherub smiled upon me, or a 
rose was blooming in my buttonhole, then I 
felt myself imperfect and impure, not fit to be 
leading and training what was so essentially 
superior to myself, and I kissed the children 
and left them weeping and wondering. 

“In despair I went to a great merchant on 
the island, and asked him to employ me. 

“ ‘My dear young friend,' said he, ‘I under- 
stand that you have some singular secret, some 
charm, or spell, or amulet, or something, I 
don’t know what, of which people are afraid. 
Now you know, my dear,* said the mer- 
chant, swelling up, and apparently prouder of 
his great stomach than of his large fortune, ‘I 
am not of that kind. I am not easily fright- 
ened. You may spare yourself the pain of 
trying to impose upon me. People who pro- 
pose to come to time before I arrive, are accus- 
tomed to arise very early in the morning, ’ said 
he, thrusting his thumbs in the armholes of 
his waistcoat, and spreading the fingers like 
two fans, upon his bosom. ‘I think I have 
heard something of your secret. You have a 
pair of spectacles, I believe, that you value 


112 


PRUE AND I. 


very much, because your grandmother brought 
them as a marriage portion to your grand- 
father. Now, if you think fit to sell me those 
spectacles, I will pay you the largest market 
price for them. What do you say?’ 

“I told him I had not the slightest idea of 
selling my spectacles. 

“ ‘My young friend means to eat them I sup- 
pose, ’ said he, with a contemptuous smile. 

“I made no reply, but was turning to leave 
the office, when the merchant called after me: 

“ ‘My young friend, poor people should 
never suffer themselves to get into pets. 
Anger is an expensive luxury, in which only 
men of a certain income can indulge. A pair 
of spectacles and a hot temper are not the 
most promising capital for success in life. 
Master Titbottom.’ 

“I said nothing, but put my hand upon the 
door to go out, when the merchant said, more 
respectfully: 

“ ‘Well, you foolish boy, if you will not sell 
your spectacles, perhaps you will agree to sell 
the use of them to me. That is, you shall only 
put them on when I direct you, and for my 
purposes. Hallo! 5^ou little fool!’ cried he, 
impatiently, as he saw that I intended to make 
no reply. 

“But I had pulled out my spectacles and put 
them on for my own purposes, and against his 
wish and desire. I looked at him, and saw a 
huge, bald-headed wild boar, with gross chaps 
and a leering eye — only the more ridiculous for 
the high-arched, gold bowed spectacles that 


PRUE AND 1. 


113 


Straddled his nose. One of his forehoofs was 
thrust into the safe, where his bills receivable 
were hived, and the other into his pocket, 
among the loose change and bills there. His 
ears were pricked forward with a brisk, sen- 
sitive smartness. In a world where prize pork 
was the best excellence, he would have carried 
off all the premiums. 

“I stepped into the next office in the street, 
and a mild-faced man, also a large and opulent 
merchant, asked me my business in such a 
tone, that I instantly looked through my spec- 
tacles, and saw a land flowing with milk and 
honey. There I pitched my tent, and stayed 
till the good man died, and his business was 
discontinued. 

“But while there, ” said Titbottom, and his 
voice trembled away into a sigh, “I first saw 
Preciosa. Despite the spectacles, I saw Pre- 
ciosa. For days, for weeks, for months, I did 
not take my spectacles with me. I ran away 
from them, I threw them up on high shelves, 
I tried to make up my mind to throw them 
into the sea, or down the well. I could not, I 
would not, I dared not, look at Preciosa through 
the spectacles. It was not possible for me 
deliberately to destroy them ; but I awoke in 
the night, and could almost have cursed my 
dear old grandfather for his gift. 

“I sometimes escaped from the office, and 
sat for whole days with Preciosa. I told her 
the strange things I had seen with my mystic 
glasses. The hours were not enough for the 
wild romances which I raved in her ear. She 

8 Prue and I 


114 


PRUE AND I. 


listened, astonished and appalled. Her bine 
eyes turned upon me with sweet depreciation. 
She clung to«me, and then withdrew, and fled 
fearfully from the room. 

“But she could not stay away. She could 
not resist my voice, in whose tones burned all 
the love that filled my heart and brain. The 
very effort to resist the desire of seeing her as 
I saw everybody else, gave a frenzy and an 
unnatural tension to my feeling and my man- 
ner. I sat by her side, looking into her eyes, 
smoothing her hair, folding her to my heart, 
which was sunken deep and deep — why not 
forever? in that dream of peace. I ran from 
her presence, and shouted, and leaped with 
joy, and sat the whole night through, thrilled 
into happiness by the thought of her love and 
loveliness, like a windharp, tightly strung, and 
answering the airiest sigh of the breeze with 
music. 

“Then came calmer days — the conviction of 
deep love settled upon our lives — as after the 
hurrying, heaving days of spring, comes the 
bland and benignant summer. 

“ ‘It is no dream then, after all, and we are 
happy,’ I said to her, one day; and there came 
no answer, for happiness is speechless. 

“ ‘We are happy then,’ 1 said to myself, 
‘there is no excitement now. How glad I am 
that I can now look at her through my specta- 
cles. ' 

“I feared lest some instinct should warn me 
to beware. I escaped from her arms, and ran 
home and seized the glasses, and bounded 


PRUE AND I. 


115 


back again to Preciosa. As I entered the room 
I was heated, my head was swimming with 
confused apprehensions, my eyes must have 
glared. Preciosa was frightened, and rising 
from her seat, stood with an inquiring glance 
of surprise in her eyes. 

“But I was bent with frenzy upon my 
purpose. I was merely aware that she was 
in the room. I saw nothing else. I heard 
nothing. I cared for nothing, but to see her 
through that magic glass, and feel at once all 
the fulness of blissful perfection which that 
would reveal. Preciosa stood before the mir- 
ror, but alarmed at my wild and eager move- 
ments, unable to distinguish what I had in my 
hands, and seeing me raise them suddenly to 
my face, she shrieked with terror, and fell 
fainting upon the floor, at the very moment 
that I placed the glasses before my eyes, and 
beheld — myself, reflected in the mirror, before 
which she had been standing. 

“Dear madam,” cried Titbottom, to my wife, 
springing up and falling back again in his 
chair, pale and trembling, while Prue ran to 
him and took his hand, and I poured out a 
glass of water — “I saw myself.” 

There was silence for many minutes. Prue 
laid her hand gently upon the head of our 
guest, whose eyes were closed, and who 
breathed softly like an infant in sleeping. 
Perhaps, in all the long years of anguish since 
that hour, no tender hand had touched his 
brow, nor wiped away the damps of a bitter 
sorrow. Perhaps the tender, maternal fingers 


116 


PRUE AND I. 


■of my wife soothed his weary head with the 
conviction that he felt the hand of his mother 
playing with the long hair of her boy in the 
soft West India morning. Perhaps it was only 
natural relief of expressing a pent-up sorrow. 

When he spoke again, it was with the old 
subdued tone, and the air of quaint solemnity, 

“These things were matters of long, long 
ago, and I came to this country soon after. I 
brought with me, premature age, a past of 
melancholy memories, and the magic spec- 
tacles. I had become their slave. I had noth- 
ing more to fear. Having seen myself, I was 
compelled to see others, properly to understand 
my relations to them. The lights that cheer 
the future of other men had gone out for me; 
my eyes were those of an exile turned back- 
ward upon the receding shore, and not forward 
wdth hope upon the ocean, 

“I mingled with men, but with little pleas- 
ure. There are but many varieties of a few 
types. I did not find those I came to clearer- 
sighted than those I had left behind. I heard 
men called shrewd and wise, and report said 
they were highly intelligent and successful. 
My finest sense detected no aroma of purity 
and principle ; but I saw only a fungus that 
bad fattened and spread in a night. They 
went to the theaters to see actors upon the 
stage. I went to see actors in the boxes, so 
consummately cunning, that others did not 
know they were acting, and they did not sus- 
pect it themselves. 

“Perhaps you wonder it did not make me 


PRUE AND I. 


117 


misanthropical. My dear friends, do not forget 
that I had seen myself. That made me com- 
passionate not cynical. 

“Of course, I could not value highly the 
ordinary standards of success and excellence. 
When I went to church and saw a thin, blue, 
artificial flower, or a great sleepy cushion 
expounding the beauty of holiness to pews full 
of eagles, half eagles, and threepences, how- 
ever adroitly concealed they might be in broad- 
cloth and boots; or saw an onion in an Easter 
bonnet weeping over the sins of Magdalen, I 
did not feel as they felt who saw in all this, 
not only propriety but piety. 

“Or when at public meetings an eel stood 
up on end, and wriggled and squirmed lithely 
in every direction, and declared that, for his 
part, he went in for rainbows and hot water — 
how could I help seeing that he was still black 
and loved a slimy pool? 

“I could not grow misanthropical when I 
saw in the eyes of so many who were called 
old, the gushing fountains of eternal youth, 
and the light of an immortal dawn, or when I 
saw those who were esteemed unsuccessful 
and aimless, ruling a fair realm of peace and 
plenty, either in their own hearts, or in 
another’s — a realm and princely possession for 
which they had well renounced a hopeless 
search and a belated triumph. 

“I knew one man who had been for years a 
byword for having sought the philosopher’s 
stone. But I looked at him through the spec- 
tacles and saw a satisfaction in concentrated 


118 


PRUE AND I. 


energies, and a tenacity arising from devotion 
to a noble dream which was not apparent in 
the youths who pitied him in the aimless 
effeminacy of clubs, nor in the clever gentle- 
men who cracked their thin jokes upon him 
over a gossiping dinner. 

“And there was your neighbor over the way, 
who passes for a woman who has failed in her 
career, because she is an old maid. People 
wag solemn heads of pity, and say that she 
made so great a mistake in not marrying the 
brilliant and famous man who was for long 
years her suitor. It is clear that no orange 
flower will ever bloom for her. The young 
people make their tender romances about her 
as they watch her, and think of her solitary 
hours of bitter regret and wasting longing, 
never to be satisfied. 

“When I first came to town I shared their 
sympathy, and pleased my imagination with 
fancying her hard struggle with the conviction 
that she had lost all that made life beautiful. 
I supposed that if I had looked at her through 
my spectacles, I should see that it was only 
her radiant temper which so illuminated her 
dress, that we did not see it to be heavy 
sables. 

“But when, one day, I did raise my glasses, 
and glanced at her, I did not see the old maid 
whom we all pitied for a secret sorrow, but a 
woman whose nature was a tropic, in which 
the sun shone, and birds sang, and flowers 
bloomed forever. There were no regrets, no 
doubts and half wishes, but a calm sweetness. 


PRUE AND I. 


119 


a transparent peace. I saw her blush when 
that Old lover passed by, or paused to speak to 
her, but it was only the sign of delicate fem- 
inine consciousness. She knew his love, and 
honored it, although she could not understand 
it nor return it. I looked closely at her, and I 
saw that although all the world had exclaimed 
at her indifference to such homage, and had 
declared it was astonishing she should lose so 
fine a match, she would only say simply and 
quietly: 

“ ‘If Shakespeare loved me and I did not 
love him, how could I marry him?’ 

“Could I be misanthropical when I saw such 
fidelity, and dignity, and simplicity? 

“You may believe that I was especially curi- 
ous to look at that old lover of hers through 
my glasses. He was no longer young, you 
know, when I came, and his fame and fortune 
were secure. Certainly I have heard of few 
men more beloved, and of none more worthy 
to be loved. He had the easy manner of a 
man of the world, the sensitive grace of a 
poet, and the charitable judgment of a wide 
traveler. He was accounted the most success- 
ful and most unspoiled of men. Handsome, 
brilliant, wise, tender, graceful, accomplished, 
rich, and famous, I looked at him, without 
the spectacles, in surprise, and admiration, and 
wondered how your neighbor over the way had 
been so entirely untouched by his homage. I 
watched their intercourse in society, I saw her 
gay smile, her cordial greeting; I marked his 
frank address, his lofty courtesy. Their man- 


120 


PRUE AND I. 


ner told no tales. The eager world was balked, 
and I pulled out my spectacles. 

‘T had seen her already, and now I saw him. 
He lived only in memory, and his memory was 
a spacious and stately palace. But he did not 
oftenest frequent the banqueting hall, where 
were endless hospitality and feasting — nor did 
he loiter much in the reception rooms, where 
a throng of new visitors was forever swarm- 
ing — nor did he feed his vanity by haunting 
the- apartments in which were stored the 
trophies of his varied triumphs — nor dream 
much in the great gallery hung with pictures 
of his travels. 

“From all these lofty halls of memory he 
constantly escaped to a remote and solitary 
chamber, into which no one had ever pene- 
trated. But my fatal eyes, behind the glasses, 
followed and entered with him, and saw that 
the chamber was a chapel. It was dim, and 
silent, and sweet with perpetual incense that 
burned upon an altar before a picture forever 
veiled. There, whenever I chanced to look, I 
saw him kneel and pray; and there, by day 
and by night, a funeral hymn was chanted. 

“I do not believe you will be surprised that I 
have been content to remain a deputy book- 
keeper. My spectacles regulated my ambition, 
and I early learned that there were better gods 
than Plutus. The glasses have lost much of 
their fascination now, and I do not often use 
them. But sometimes the desire is irresistible. 
Whenever I am greatly interested, I am com- 


PRUE AND I. 


121 


pelled to take them out and see what it is that 
I admire. 

“And yet — and yet,” said Titbottom, after a 
pause, “I am not sure that I thank my grand- 
father. ’* 

Prue had long since laid away her work, and 
had heard every word of the story. I saw that 
the dear woman had yet one question to ask, 
and had been earnestly hoping to hear some- 
thing that would spare her the necessity of ask- 
ing. But Titbottom had resumed his usual 
tone, after the momentary excitement, and 
made no further allusion to himself. We all 
sat silently; Titbottom’s eyes fastened mus- 
ingly upon the carpet, Prue looking wistfully 
at him, and I regarding both. 

It was past midnight, and our guest arose to 
go. He shook hands quietly, made his grave 
Spanish bow to Prue, and taking his hat, went 
toward the front door. Prue and I accompan- 
ied him. I saw in her eyes that she would ask 
her question. And as Titbottom opened the 
door, I heard the low words : 

“And Preciosa?’* 

Titbottom paused. He had just opened the 
door, and the moonlight streamed over him as 
he stood, turning back to us. 

“1 have seen her but once since. It was in 
church, and she was kneeling, with her eyes 
closed, so that she did not see me. But I 
rubbed the glasses well, and looked at her, 
and saw a white lily, whose stem was broken, 
but which was fresh, and luminous, and 
fragrant still.” 


122 


PRUE AND I. 


‘‘That was a miracle,” interrupted Prue. 

“Madam, it was a miracle,” replied Titbot- 
tom, “and for that one sight I am devoutly 
grateful for my grandfather’s gift. I saw, 
that although a flower may have lost its hold 
upon earthly moisture, it may still bloom as 
sweetly, fed by the dews of heaven.” 

The door closed, and he was gone. But as 
Prue put her arm in mine, and we went up- 
stairs together, she whispered in my ear: 

“How glad I am that you don’t wear spec- 
tacles. ’ ' 


PRUE AND I. 


123 


A CRUISE IN THE FLYING DUTCH- 
MAN, 

“When I sailed; when I sailed.” 

— Ballad of Robert Kidd. 

With the opening of spring my heart opens. 
My fancy expands with the flowers, and, I walk 
down town in the May morning, toward the 
dingy counting-room, and the old routine, you 
would hardly believe that I would not change 
my feelings for those of the French Barber- 
poet Jasmin, who goes, merrily singing, to his 
shaving and hair-cutting. 

The first warm day puts the whole winter to 
flight. It stands in front of the summer like 
a young warrior before his host, and, single- 
handed, defies and destroys its remorseless 
enemy. 

I threw up the chamber window, to breathe 
the earliest breath of summer. 

“The brave young David has hit old Goliath 
square in the forehead this morning, “ I say to 
Prue, as I lean out, and bathe in the soft sun- 
shine. 

My wife is tying on her cap at the glass, 
and, not quite disentangled from her dreams, 
thinks I am speaking of a street brawl, and 
replies that I had better take care of my own 
head. 


124 


PRUE AND 1. 


“Since you have charge of my heart, I sup- 
pose,” I answer gayly, turning round to make 
her one of Titbottom’s bows. 

“But seriously, Prue, how is it about my 
summer wardrobe ? ” 

Prue smiles, and tells me we shall have two 
months of winter yet, and I had better stop and 
order some more coal as I go downtown. 

“Winter — coal!” 

Then I step back, and taking her by the arm, 
lead her to the window. I throw it open even 
wider than before. The sunlight streams on 
the great church towers opposite, and the trees 
in the neighboring square glisten, and wave 
their boughs gently, as if they would burst into 
leaf before dinner. Cages are hung at the 
open chamber windows in the street, and the 
birds, touched into song by the sun, make 
Memnon true. Prue’s purple and white hya- 
cinths are in full blossom, and perfume the. 
warm air, so that the canaries and the mocking- 
birds are no longer aliens in the city streets, 
but are once more swinging in their spicy 
native groves. 

A soft wind blows upon us as we stand, 
listening and looking. Cuba and the Tropics 
are in the air. The drowsy tune of a hand 
organ rises from the square, and Italy comes 
singing in upon the sound. My triumphant 
eyes meet Prue*s. They are full of sweetness 
and spring. 

“What do you think of the summer ward- 
robe now?” I ask, and we go down to break- 
fast. 


PRUE AND I. 


125 


But the air has magic in it, and I do not 
cease to dream. If I meet Charles, who is 
bound for Alabama, or Joh, who sails for Sav- 
annah^ with a trunk full of white jackets, I do 
not say to them, as their other friends say: 

“Happy travelers, who cut March and April 
out of the dismal year!“ 

I do not envy them. They will be seasick 
on the way. The southern winds will blow all 
the water out of the rivers, and, desolately 
stranded upon mud, they will relieve the tedium 
of the interval by tying with large ropes a 
young gentleman raving with delirium tre- 
mens. They will hurry along, applauded by 
forests blazing in the windy night; and, housed 
in a bad inn, they will find themselves anxiously 
asking, “Are the cars punctual in leaving?’* 
grimly sure that impatient travelers find all 
conveyances too slow. The travelers are very 
warm, indeed, even in March and April — but 
Prue doubts if it is altogether the effect of the 
southern climate. 

Why should they go to the South? If they 
only wait a little, the South will come to them. 
Savannah arrives in April; Florida in May; 
Cuba and the Gulf come in with June, and the 
full splendor of the Tropics burns through 
July and August. Sitting upon the earth, do 
we not glide by all the constellations, all the 
awful stars? 

Does not the flash of Orion’s scimeter dazzle 
as we pass? Do we not hear, as we gaze in 
hushed midnights, the music of the Lyre; are 
we not throned with Cassiopea ; do we not play 


126 


PRUE AND I. 


with the tangles of Berenice’s hair, as we sail, 
as we sail? 

When Christopher told me that he was going 
to Italy, I went into Bourne’s conservatory, 
saw a magnolia, and so reached Italy before 
him. Can Christopher bring Italy home? But 
I brought to Prue a branch of magnolia blos- 
soms, with Mr. Bourne’s kindest regards, and 
she put them upon her table, and our little 
house smelled of Italy for a week afterward. 
The incident developed Prue’s Italian tastes, 
which I had not suspected to be so strong. I 
found her looking very often at the magnolias; 
even holding them in her hand, and standing 
before the table with a pensive air. I suppose 
she was thinking of Beatrice Cenci, or of Tasso 
and Leonora, or of the wife of Marino Faliero, 
or of some other of thos^ sad old Italian tales of 
love and woe. So easily Prue went to Italy. 

Thus the spring comes in my heart as well 
as in the air, and leaps along my veins as well 
as through the trees. I immediately travel. 
An orange takes me to Sorrento, and roses, 
when they blow to Paestum. The camelias in 
Aurelia’s hair bring Brazil into the happy 
rooms she treads, and she takes me to South 
America as she goes to dinner. The pearls 
upon her neck make me free of the Persian 
gulf. Upon her shawl, like the Arabian prince 
upon his carpet, I am transported to the vales 
of Cashmere ; and thus, as I daily walk in the 
bright spring days, I go round the world. 

But the season wakes a finer longing, a 
desire that could only be satisfied i/ the pavil- 


PRUE A\D I. 


127 


ions oi the clouds were real, and I could stroll 
among the towering splendors of a sultry 
spring evening. Ah! if I could leap those 
flaming battlements that glow along the West 
— if I could tread those cool, dewy, serene isles 
of sunset, and sink with them in the sea of 
stars. 

I say so to Prue, and my wife smiles. 

“But why is it so impossible,*' I ask, “if you 
go to Italy upon a magnolia branch?" 

The smiles fades from her eyes. 

“I went a shorter voyage than that," she 
answered; “it was only to Mr. Bourne’s." 

I walked slowly out of the house, and over- 
took Titbottom as I went. He smiled gravely 
as he greeted me and said : 

“I have been asked to invite you to join a 
little pleasure party." 

“Where is it going?" 

“Oh! anywhere," answered Titbottom. 

“And how?" 

“Oh! anyhow," he replied. 

“You mean that everybody is to go wherever 
he pleases, and in the way he best can. My 
dear Titbottom, I have long belonged to that 
pleasure party, although I never heard it called 
by so pleasant a name before." 

My companion said only: 

“If you would like to join, I will introduce 
you to the party. I cannot go, but they are 
all on board. ’ ’ 

I answered nothing; but Titbottom drew me 
along. We took a boat, and put off to the 
most extraordinary craft I had ever seen. We 


128 


PRUE AND I. 


approached her stern, and as I curiously looked 
at it, I could think of nothing but an old picture 
that hung in my father’s house. It was of the 
Flemish school, and represented the rear view 
of the vrouw of a burgomaster going to mar- 
ket. The wide yards were stretched like 
elbows, and even the studding-sails were 
spread. The hull was seared and blistered, 
and, in the tops, I saw what I supposed to be 
strings of turnips or cabbages, little round 
masses, with tufted crests, but Titbottom 
assured me they were sailors. 

We rowed hard, but came no nearer the 
vessel. 

“She is going with the tide and wind,” said 
I ; “we shall never catch her. ” 

My companion said nothing. 

“But why have they set the studding-sails?” 
asked I. 

“She never takes in any sails,” answered 
Titbottom. 

“The more fool she,” thought I, a little 
impatiently, angry at not getting nearer to the 
vessel. But I did not say it aloud. I would 
as soon have said it to Prue as to Titbottom. 
The truth is, I began to feel a little ill, from 
the motion of the boat, and remembered, with 
a shade of regret, Prue and peppermint. If 
wuves could only keep their husbands a little 
nauseated, I am confident they might be very 
sure of their constancy. 

But somehow, the strange ship was gained, 
and I found myself among as singular a com- 
pany as I have ever seen. There were men of 


PRUE AND I. 


129 


every country, and costumes of all kinds. 
There was an indescribable mistiness in the 
air, or a premature twilight, in which all the 
figures looked ghostly and unreal. The ship 
was of a model such as I had never seen, and 
the rigging had a musty odor, so that the 
whole craft smelled like a ship chandler’s shop 
grown mouldy. The figures glided rather than 
walked about, and I perceived a strong smell 
of cabbage issuing from the hold. But the 
most extraordinary thing of all was the sense 
of resistless motion which possessed my mind 
the moment my foot struck the deck. I could 
have sworn we were dashing through the water 
at the rate of twenty knots an hour. (Prue 
has a great, but a little ignorant admiration of 
my technical knowledge of nautical affairs and 
phrases.) I looked aloft and saw the sails 
taut with a stiff breeze, and I heard a faint 
whistling of the wind in the rigging, but very 
faint, and rather, it seemed to me, as if it came 
from the creak of cordage in the ships of Cru- 
saders ; or of quaint old craft upon the Span- 
ish main, echoing through remote years — so 
far away it sounded. 

Yet I heard no orders given ; I saw no sailors 
running aloft, and only one figure crouching 
over the wheel. He was lost behind his great 
beard as behind a snowdrift. But the start- 
ling speed with which we scudded along did 
not lift a solitary hair of that beard, nor did 
the old and withered face of the pilot betray 
any curiosity or interest as to what breakers, 

9 Prue and I 


130 


PRUE AND I. 


or reefs, or pitiless shores, might be lying in 
ambush to destroy us. 

Still on we swept; and as the traveler in a 
night train knows that he is passing green fields, 
and pleasant gardens, and winding streams 
fringed with flowers, and is now gliding through 
tunnels or darting along the base of fearful 
cliffs, so I was conscious that we were pressing 
through various climates and by romantic 
shores. In vain I peered into the gray twilight 
mist that folded all. I could only see the vague 
figures that grew and faded upon the haze, as 
my eye fell upon them, like the intermittent 
characters of sympathetic ink when heat 
touches them. 

Now, it was a belt of warm, odorous air in 
which we sailed, and then cold as the breath 
of a polar ocean. The perfume of new mown 
hay and the breath of roses, came mingled 
with the distant music of bells, and the twitter- 
ing song of birds, and a low surf-like sound of 
the wind in summer woods. There were all 
sounds of pastoral beauty, of a tranquil land- 
scape such as Prue loves — and which shall be 
painted as the background of her portrait 
whenever she sits to any of my many artist 
friends — and that pastoral beauty shall be 
called England. I strained my eyes into the 
cruel mist that held all that music and all that 
suggested beauty, but I could see nothing. 
It was so sweet that I scarcely knew if I cared 
to see. The 'very thought of it charmed my 
senses and satisfied my heart. I smelled and 
heard the landscape that I could not see. 


PRUE AND I. 


131 


Then the pungent, penetrating fragrance of 
blossoming vineyards was wafted across the 
air ; the flowery richness of orange groves, and 
the sacred odor of crushed bay leaves, such as 
is pressed from them when they are strewn 
upon the flat pavement of the streets of Flor- 
ence, and gorgeous priestly processions tread 
them under foot. A stream of incense filled 
the air. I smelled Italy — as in the magnolia 
from Bourne’s garden — and, even while my 
heart leaped with the consciousness, the odor 
passed, and a stretch of burning silence suc- 
ceeded. 

It was an oppressive zone of heat — oppres- 
sive not only from its silence but from the 
sense of awful antique forms, whether of art or 
nature, that were sitting, closely veiled, in that 
mysterious obscurity. I shuddered as I felt 
that if my eyes could pierce that mist, or if it 
should lift and roll away, I should see upon a 
silent shore low ranges of lonely hills, or 
mystic figures and huge temples trampled out 
of history by time. 

This, too, we left. There was a rustling of 
distant palms, the indistinct roar of beasts, 
and the hiss of serpents. Then all was still 
again. Only at times the remote sigh of the 
weary sea, moaning around desolate isles 
undiscovered; and the howl of winds that had 
never wafted human voices, but had rung end- 
less changes upon the sound of dashing waters, 
made the voyage more appalling and the 
figures around me more fearful. 

As the ship plunged on through all the vary- 


132 


PRUE AND I. 


ing zones, as climate and country drifted 
behind us, unseen in the gray mist, but each, 
in turn, making that quaint craft England or 
Italy, Africa and the Southern seas, I ventured 
to steal a glance at the motley crew, to see 
what impression this wild career produced upon 
them. 

The)’' sat about the deck in a hundred listless 
postures. Some leaned idly over the bulwarks, 
and looked wistfully away from the ship, as if 
they fancied they saw all that I inferred but 
could not see. As the perfume, and sound, 
and climate changed, I could see many a long- 
ing eye sadden and grow moist, and as the 
chime of bells echoed distinctly like the airy 
syllables of names, and, as it were, made pic- 
tures in music upon the minds of those quaint 
mariners — then dry lips moved, perhaps to 
name a name, perhaps to breathe a prayer. 
Others sat upon the deck, vacantly smoking 
pipes that required no refilling, but had an 
immortality of weed and fire. The more they 
smoked the more mysterious they became. 
The smoke made the mist around them more 
impenetrable, and I could clearly see that 
those distant sounds gradually grew more dis- 
tant, and, by some of the most desperate and 
constant smokers, were heard no more. The 
faces of such had an apathy, which had it been 
human, would have been despair. 

Others stood staring up into the rigging, as 
if calculating when the sails must needs be 
rent and the voyage end. But there was no 
hope in their eyes, only a bitter longing. Some 


PRUE AND I. 


133 


paced restlessly up and down the deck. They 
had evidently been walking a long, long time. 
At intervals they, too, threw a searching glance 
into the mist that enveloped the ship, and up 
into the sails and rigging that stretched over 
them in hopeless strength and order. 

One of the promenaders I especially noticed. 
His beard was long and snowy, like that of 
the pilot. He had a staff in his hand, and his 
movement was very rapid. His body swung 
forward, as if to avoid something, and his 
glance, half-turned back over his shoulder, 
apprehensively, as if he were threatened from 
behind. The head and the whole figure were 
bowed as if under a burden, although I could 
not see that he had anything upon his shoul- 
ders; and his gait was not that of a man who 
is walking off the ennui of a voyage, but rather 
of a criminal flying, or of a startled traveler 
pursued. 

As he came nearer to me in his walk, I saw 
that his features were strongly Hebrew, and 
there was an air of the proudest dignity, fear- 
fully abased, in his mien and expression. It 
was more than the dignity of an individual. I 
could have believed that the pride of a race 
was humbled in his person. 

His agile eye presently fastened itself upon 
me, as a stranger. He came nearer and nearer 
to me, as he paced rapidly to and fro, and was 
evidently several times on the point of address- 
ing me, but, looking over his shoulder appre- 
hensively, he passed on. At length, with a 
great effort, he paused for an instant, and in- 


134 


PRUE AND I. 


vited me to join him in his walk. Before the 
invitation was fairly uttered, he was in motion 
again. I followed, but I could not overtake 
him. He kept just before me and turned occa- 
sionally with an air of terror, as if he fancied I 
were dogging him ; then glided on more rap- 
idly. 

His face was by no means agreeable, but it 
had an inexplicable fascination, as if it had 
been turned upon what no other mortal eyes 
had ever seen. Yet I could hardly tell whether 
it were, probably, an object of supreme beauty 
or of terror. He looked at everything as if he 
hoped its impression might obliterate some 
anterior and awful one ; and I was gradually 
possessed with the unpleasant idea that his 
eyes were never closed — that in fact, he never 
slept. Suddenly, fixing me with his unnat- 
ural, wakeful glare, he whispered something 
which I could not understand, and then darted 
forward even more rapidly, as if he dreaded 
that, in merely speaking, he had lost time. 

Still the ship drove on, and I walked hur- 
riedly along the deck, just behind my compan- 
ion. But our speed and that of the ship con- 
trasted strangely with the mouldy smell of old 
rigging, and the listless and lazy groups, 
smoking, and leaning on the bulwarks. The 
seasons, in endless succession and iteration, 
passed over the ship. The twilight was sum- 
mer haze at the stern, while it was the fiercest 
winter mist at the bows. But as a tropical 
breath, like the warmth of a Syrian day, sud- 


PRUE AND I. 


135 


denly touched the brow of my companion, he 
sighed, and I could not help saying : 

“You must be tired. “ 

He only shook his head and quickened his 
pace. But now that I had once spoken, it was 
not so difficult to speak, and I asked him why 
he did not stop and rest. 

He turned for a moment, and a mournful 
sweetness shone in his dark eyes and haggard, 
swarthy face. It played fittingly around that 
strange look of ruined human dignity, like a 
wan beam of late sunset about a crumbling and 
forgotten temple. He put his hand hurriedly 
to his forehead, as if he were trying to remem- 
ber — like a lunatic, who, having heard only the 
wrangle of fiends in his delirium, suddenly, in 
a conscious moment, perceives the familiar 
voice of love. But who could this be, to whom 
mere human sympathy was so startingly 
sweet? 

Still moving, he whispered with a woeful 
sadness, “I want to stop, but I cannot. If I 
could only stop long enough to leap over the 
bulwarks!’* 

Then he sighed long and deeply, and added, 
“But I should not drown.’’ 

So much had my interest been excited by 
his face and movement, that I had not observed 
the costume of this strange being. He wore a 
black hat upon his head. It was not only 
black, but it was shiny. Even in the midst of 
this wonderful scene, I could observe that it 
had the artificial newness of a second-hand 
hat; and, at the same moment, I was disgusted 


136 


PRUE AND I. 


by the odor of old clothes — very old clothes, 
indeed. The mist and my sympathy had pre- 
vented my seeing before what a singular garb 
the figure wore. It was all second-hand and 
carefully ironed, but the garments were obvi- 
ously collected from every part of the civilized 
globe. Good heavens! as I looked at the coat, 
I had a strange sensation. I was sure that I 
had once worn that coat. It was my wedding 
surtout — long in the skirts — which Prue had 
told me, years and years before, she had given 
away to the neediest Jevr beggar she had ever 
seen. 

The spectral figure dwindled in my fancy — 
the features lost their antique grandeur, and 
the restless eye ceased to be sublime from im- 
mortal sleeplessness, and became only lively 
with mean cunning. The apparition was fear- 
fully grotesque, but the driving ship and the 
mysterious company gradually restored its 
tragic interest. I stopped and leaned against 
the side, and heard the rippling water that I 
could not see, and flitting through the mist, 
with anxious speed, the figure held its way. 
What was he flying? What conscience with 
relentless sting pricked this victim on? 

He came again nearer and nearer to me, in 
his walk. I recoiled with disgust, this time, 
no less than terror. But he seemed resolved 
to speak, and, finally, each time, as he passed 
me, he asked single questions, as a ship which 
fires whenever it can bring a gun to bear. 

“Can you tell me what port we are bound?“ 

“No,“ I replied; “but how came you to take 


PRUE AND I. 


137 


passage without inquiry? To me it makes lit- 
tle difference.” 

“Nor do I care,” he answered, when he next 
came near enough; “I have already been 
there. ” 

“Where?” asked I. 

“Wherever we are going,” he replied. “I 
have been there a great many times, and oh ! I 
am very tired of it. ’ * 

“But why are you here at all, then ; and why 
don’t you stop?” 

There was a singular mixture of a hundred 
conflicting emotions in his face, as I spoke. 
The representative grandeur of a race, which 
he sometimes showed in his look, faded into a 
glance of hopeless and puny despair. His eyes 
looked at me curiously, his chest heaved, and 
there was clearly a struggle in his mind, be- 
tween some lofty and mean desire. At times 
I saw only the austere suffering of ages in his 
strongly-carved features, and again I could 
see nothing but the second-hand black hat 
above them. He rubbed his forehead with his 
skinny hand ; he glanced over his shoulder, as 
if calculating whether he had time to speak to 
me ; and then, as a splendid defiance flashed 
from his piercing eyes, so that I know how Mil- 
ton’s vSatan looked, he said, bitterly, and with 
hopeless sorrow, that no mortal voice ever 
knew before: 

“I cannot stop; my woe is infinite, like my 
sin!” and he passed into the mist. 

But, in a few moments he reappeared. I 
could now see only the hat, which sank more 


138 


PRUE AND I. 


and more over his face, until it covered it en- 
tirely ; and I heard a querulous voice, which 
seemed to be quarreling with itself, for saying 
what it was compelled to say, so that the words 
were even more appalling than what it had 
said before: 

“OldcloM old cloM^* 

I gazed at the disappearing figure, in speech- 
less amazement, and was still looking, when I 
was tapped upon the shoulder, and, turning 
round, saw a German cavalry officer, with a 
heavy mustache, and dog- whistle in his hand. 

“Most extraordinary man, your friend yon- 
der,*' said the officer; “I don’t remember to 
have seen him in Turkey, and yet I recognize 
upon his feet the boots that I wore in the great 
Russian cavalry charge, where I individually 
rode down five hundred and thirty Turks, slew 
seven hundred, at a moderate computation, by 
the mere force of my rush, and, taking the 
seven insurmountable walls of Constantinople 
at one clean flying leap, rode straight into the 
seraglio, and, dropping the bridle, cut the sul- 
tan’s throat with m}^ bridle-hand, kissed the 
other to the ladies of the harem, and was back 
again within our lines and taking a glass of 
wine with the hereditary Grand Duke General- 
issimo before he knew that I had mounted. 
Oddly enough, your old friend is now sporting 
the identical boots I wore on that occasion.” 

The cavalry officer coolly curled his mustache 
with his fingers. I looked at him in silence. 

“Speaking of boots,” he resumed, “I don’t 
remember to have told you of that little inci- 


PRUE AND I. 


139 


dent of the Princess of the Crimea’s diamonds. 
It was slight, but curious. I was dining one 
day with the Emperor of the Crimea, who al- 
ways had a cover laid for me at his table, when 
he said, in great perplexity, ‘Baron, my boy, 
I am in straits. The Shah of Persia has just 
sent me word that he has presented me with 
two thousand pearl-of-Oman necklaces, and I 
don’t know how to get them over, the duties 
are so heavy.’ ‘Nothing easier,’ replied I ; ‘I’ll 
bring them in my boots.’ ‘Nonsense!’ said the 
Emperor of the Crimea. ‘Nonsense! your- 
self, ’ replied I, sportively ; for the Emperor of 
the Crimea always gives me my joke ; and so 
after dinner I went over to Persia. The thing 
was easily enough done. I ordered a hundred 
thousand pairs of boots or so, filled them with 
the pearls ; said at the customhouse that they 
were part of my private wardrobe, and I had 
left the blocks in to keep them stretched, for 
I was particular about my bunions. The offi- 
cers bowed, and said that their own feet were 
tender, upon which I jokingly remarked that I 
wished their consciences were, and so in the 
pleasantest manner possible the pearl-of-Oman 
necklaces were bowed out of Persia, and the 
Emperor of the Crimea gave me three thou- 
sand of them as my share. It was no trouble. 
It was only ordering the boots, and whistling 
to the infernal rascals of Persian shoemakers 
to hang for their pay.” 

I could reply nothing to my new acquaint- 
ance, but I treasured his stories to tell to Prue, 


140 


PRUE AND I. 


and at length summoned courage to ask him 
why he had taken passage. 

“Pure fun,” answered he, “nothing else un- 
der the sun. You see, it happened in this way: 
I was sitting quietly and swinging in a cedar 
of Lebanon, on the very summit of that moun- 
tain, when suddenly, feeling a little warm, I 
took a brisk dive into the Mediterranean. 
Now I was careless, and got going obliquely, 
and with the force of such a dive I could not 
come up near Sicily, as I had intended, but I 
went clean under Africa, and came out at the 
Cape of Good Hope, and as fortune would have 
it, just as this good ship was passing. So I 
sprang over the side, and offered the crew to 
treat all round if they would tell me where I 
started from. But I suppose they had just 
been piped to grog, for not a man stirred, ex- 
cept your friend yonder, and he only kept on 
stirring. ” 

“Are you going far?” I asked. 

The cavalry officer looked a little disturbed. 
“I cannot precisely tell,” answered he, “in 
fact, I wish I could;” and he glanced round 
nervously at the strange company. 

“If you should come our way, Prue and I 
will be very glad to see you,” said I, “and I 
can promise you a warm welcome from the 
children. ” 

“Many thanks,” said the officer — and handed 
me his card, upon which I read, “Le Baron 
Munchausen.” 

“I beg your pardon,” said alow voice at my 
side ; and, turning, I saw one of the most con- 


PRUE AND I. 


141 


stant smokers — a very old man — “I beg your 
pardon, but can you tell me where I came 
from?*’ 

“I am sorry to say I cannot,” answered I, as 
I surveyed a man with a very bewildered and 
wrinkled face, who seemed to be intently look- 
ing for something. 

“Nor where I am going?” 

I replied that it was equally impossible. He 
mused a few moments, and then said slowly, 
“Do you know, it is a very strange thing that 
I have not found anybody who can answer me 
either of those questions. And yet I must 
have come from somewhere, ’ ’ said he specula- 
tively — “yes, and I must be going somewhere, 
and 1 should really like to know something 
about it. * ’ 

“I observe,” said I, “that you smoke a good 
deal, and perhaps you find tobacco clouds your 
brain a little. ’ ’ 

“Smoke! Smoke!” repeated he, sadly dwel- 
ling upon the words; “why, it all seems smoke 
to me,” and he looked wistfully around the 
deck, and I felt quite ready to agree with 
him. 

“May I ask what your are here for,” in- 
quired I; “perhaps your health, or business of 
some kind ; although I was told it was a pleas- 
ure party?” 

“That’s just it,” said he; “if I only knew 
where we were going, I might be able to say 
something about it. But where are you going?’ ’ 

“I am going home as fast as I can,” replied 
I warmly, for I began to be very uncomfort- 


142 


PRUE AND I. 


able. The old man’s eyes half-closed, and his 
mind seemed to have struck a scent. 

‘Tsn’t that where I was going? I believe it 
is; I wish I knew; I think that’s what it is 
called. Where is home?” 

And the old man puffed a prodigious cloud 
of smoke, in which he was quite lost. 

‘Tt is certainly very smoky,” said he, ‘T 
came on board this ship to go to — in fact, I 
meant, as I was saying, I took passage for — ” 
He smoked silently. ‘T beg your pardon, but 
where did you say I was going?” 

Out of the mist where he had been leaning 
over the side, and gazing earnestly into the 
surrounding obscurity, now came a pale young 
man, and put his arm in mine. 

see,” said he, “that you have rather a 
general acquaintance, and, as you know many 
persons, perhaps you know many things. I 
am young, you see, but I am a great traveler. 
I have been all over the world, and in all kinds 
of conveyances; but/’ he continued, nervously, 
starting continually, and looking around, ‘T 
haven’t yet got abroad.” 

“Not got abroad, and yet you have been 
everywhere?” 

“Oh! yes; I know,” he replied, hurriedly: 
“but I mean that I haven’t yet got away. I 
travel constantly, but it does no good — and 
perhaps you can tell me the secret I want to 
know. I will pay any sum for it. I am very 
rich and very young, and if money cannot buy 
it, I will give as many years of my life as you 
require.” 


PRUE AND L 


143 


He moved his hands convulsively, and his 
hair was wet upon his forehead. He was very 
handsome in that mystic light, but his eye 
burned with eagerness, and his slight, graceful 
frame thrilled with the earnestness of his emo- 
tion. The Emperor Hadrian, who loved the 
boy Antonins, would have loved the youth. 

“But what is it that you wish to leave be- 
hind?” said I, at length, holding his arm pater- 
nally; “what do you wish to escape?” 

He threw his arms straight down by his side, 
clinched his hands and looked fixedly in my 
eyes. The beautiful head was thrown a little 
back upon one shoulder, and the wan face 
glowed with yearning desire and utter aban- 
donment to confidence, so that, without his 
saying it, I knew that he had never whispered 
the secret which he was about to impart to me. 
Then, with a long sigh, as if his life were 
exhaling, he whispered : 

“Myself. ” 

“Ah! my boy, you are bound upon a long* 
journey. ” 

“I know it,” he replied mournfully; “and I 
cannot even get started. If I don’t get off in 
this ship, I fear I shall never escape.” His 
last words were lost in the mist which grad- 
ually removed him from my view. 

“The youth has been amusing you with some 
of his wild fancies, I suppose,” said a vener- 
able man, who might have been twin brother 
of that snowy-bearded pilot. “It is a great 
pity so promising a young man should be the 
victim of such vagaries.” 


144 


PRUE AND I. 


He stoq^ looking over the side for some time, 
and at length added: 

‘^Don’t yqu. think we ought to arrive soon?’' 
“Where?’’ h^ked I. 

“Why, in Eldorado, of course, ” answered he. 
‘‘The truth is, I became very tired of that long 
process to find the Philosopher’s Stone, and, 
although I was just upon the point of the last 
combination which must infallibly have pro- 
duced the medium, I abandoned it when I heard 
Orellana’s account, and found that Nature had 
already done in Eldorado precisely what I was 
trying to do. You see,” continued the old 
man abstractedly, “I had put youth, and love, 
and hope, besides a great many scarce miner- 
als, into the crucible, and they all dissolved 
slowly and vanished in vapor. It was curious, 
but they left no residuum except a little ashes, 
which were not strong enough to make a lye 
to cure a lame finger. But, as I was saying, 
Orellana told us about Eldorado just in time, 
and I thought, if any ship would carry me 
there it must be this. But I am very sorry to 
find that any one who is in pursuit of such a 
hopeless goal as that pale young man yonder, 
should have taken passage. It is only age,” 
he said, slowly stroking his white beard, “that 
teaches us wisdom, and persuades us to re- 
nounce the hope of escaping ourselves; and 
just as we are discovering the Philosopher’s 
Stone, relieves our anxiety by pointing the way 
to Eldorado.” 

“Are we really going there?” asked I, in 
some trepidation. 



When I was tapped upon the shoulder.” — Page P38. 

True and I. 




PRUE AND I. 


145 


‘^Can there be any doubt of it?” replied the 
old man. “Where should we be going, if not 
there? However, let us summon the passen- 
gers and ascertain.’* 

So saying, the venerable man beckoned to 
the various groups that were clustered, ghost 
like in the mist that enveloped the ship. They 
seemed to draw nearer with listless curiosity, 
and stood or sat near us, smoking as before, or, 
still leaning on the side, idly gazing. But 
the restless figure who had first accosted me, 
still paced the deck, flitting in and out of the 
obscurity; and as he passed there was the 
same mien of humbled pride, and the air of a 
fate of tragic grandeur, and still the same 
faint odor of old clothes, and the low querul- 
ous cry, “Old do’!” old do’!” 

The ship dashed on. Unknown odors and 
strange sounds still filled the air, and all the 
world went by us as we flew, with no other 
noise than the low gurgling of the sea around 
the side. 

“Gentlemen,” said the reverend passenger 
for Eldorado, “I hope there is no misappre- 
hension as to our destination?” 

As he said this, there was a general move- 
ment of anxiety and curiosity. Presently the 
smoker, who had asked me where he was 
going, said, doubtfully: 

“I don’t now — it seems to me — I mean I 
wish somebody would distinctly say where we 
are going. ’ ’ 

“I think I can throw a light upon this 
subject,” said a person whom I had not before 

10 Prue and I 


146 


PRUE AND I. 


remarked. He was dressed like a sailor, and 
had a dreamy eye. “It is very clear to me 
where we are going. I have been taking 
observations for some time, and I am glad to 
announce that we are on the eve of achieving 
great fame; and I may add,'* said he, mod- 
ostly, “that my own good name for scientific 
acumen will be amply vindicated. Gentle- 
men, we are undoubtedly going into the 
Hole.** 

“What hole is that?** asked M. le Baron 
Munchausen, a little contemptuously. 

“Sir, it will make you more famous than 
you ever were before,** replied the first 
speaker, evidently much enraged. 

“I am persuaded we are going into no such 
absurd place,” said the baron, exasperated. 

The sailor with the dreamy eye was fearfully 
angry. He drew himself up stiffly and said : 

“Sir, you lie!** 

M. le Baron Munchausen took it in very 
good part. He smiled and held out his hand : 

“My friend,** said he, blandly, “that is pre- 
cisely what I have always heard. I am glad 
you do me no more than justice. I fully 
assent to your theory; and your words consti- 
tute me the proper historiographer of the 
expedition. But tell me one thing, how soon, 
after getting into the Hole, do you think we 
shall get out?** 

“The result will prove,** said the marine 
gentleman, handing the officer his card, upon 
which was written “Captain Symmes.*’ 

The two gentlemen then walked aside ; and 


PRUE AND I. 


14T 


the groups began to sway to and fro in the haze 
as if not quite contented. 

“Good God,” said the pale youth, running^ 
up to me and clutching my arm, “I cannot 
go into any Hole with myself. I should die — 
I should kill myself. I thought somebody was 
on board, and I hoped you were he, who would 
steer us to the fountain of oblivion.*' 

“Very well, that is in the Plole,” said M. 
le Baron who came out of the mist at that 
moment, leaning upon the captain’s arm. 

“But can’t I leave myself outside?”asked the 
youth, nervously. 

“Certainly,” interposed the old Alchemist; 
“you may be sure that you will not get inta 
the Hole, until you have left yourself behind.” 

The pale young man grasped his hand, and 
gazed into his eyes. 

“And then I can drink and be happy,” 
murmured he, as he leaned over the side of 
the ship, and listened to the rippling water, 
as if it had been the music of the fountain of 
oblivion. 

“Drink! drink!” said the smoking old man. 
“Fountain! fountain! Why, I believe that 
is what I am after. I beg your pardon,” con- 
tinued he, addressing the Alchemist. “But 
can you tell me if I am looking for a foun- 
tain?” 

“The fountain of youth, perhaps,” replied 
the Alchemist. 

“The very thing!” cried the smoker, with a 
shrill laugh, while his pipe fell from his 
mouth, and was shattered upon the deck, and 


148 


PRUE AND I. 


the old man tottered away into the mist, chuck- 
ling feebly to himself, “Youth! youth!’' 

“He’ll find that in the Hole, too,” said the 
Alchemist, as he gazed after the receding 
figure. 

The crowd now gathered more nearly around 
us. 

“Well, gentlemen,” continued the Alche- 
mist, “where shall we go, or, rather, where 
are we going?” 

A man in a friar’s habit, with the cowl 
closely drawn about his head, now crossed 
himself, and whispered: 

“I have but one object. I should not have 
been here if I had not supposed we were going 
to find Prester John, to whom I have been 
appointed father confessor, and at whose court 
I am to live splendidly, like a cardinal at Rome. 
Gentlemen, if you will only agree that we shall 
go there, you shall all be permitted to hold my 
train when I proceed to be enthroned as Bishop 
of Central Africa. 

While he was speaking, another old man 
came from the bows of the ship, a figure 
which had been so immovable in its place that 
I supposed it was the ancient figurehead of 
the craft, and said in a low, hollow voice, 
and a quaint accent: 

“I have been looking for centuries, and I 
cannot see it. I supposed we were heading for 
it. I thought sometimes I saw the flash of 
distant spires, the sunny gleam of upland 
pastures, the soft undulation of purple hills. 
Ah! me. I am sure I heard the singing of 


PRUE AND I. 


149 


birds, and the faint low of cattle. But I do not 
know; we come no nearer; and yet I felt its 
presence in the air. If the mist would only 
lift, we should see it lying so fair upon the sea, 
so graceful against the sky. I fear we may 
have passed it. Gentlemen,” said he, sadly, 
“I am afraid we may have lost the island of 
Atlantis forever.” 

There was a look of uncertainty in the throng 
upon the deck. 

“Bu4:yet, ” said a group of young men in 
every kind of costume, and of every country 
and time, ‘*we have a chance at the Encan- 
tadas, the Enchanted Islands. We were read- 
ing of them only the other day, and the very 
style of the story had the music of waves. 
How happy we shall be to reach a land where 
there is no work, nor tempest, nor pain, and 
we shall be forever happy.” 

“I am content here,” said a laughing youth, 
with heavily matted curls. “What can be 
better than this? We feel every climate, the 
music and the perfume of every zone, are ours. 
In the starlight I woo the mermaids, as I lean 
over the sides, and no enchanted island will 
show us fairer forms. I am satisfied. The 
ship sails on. We cannot see but we can 
dream. What work or pain have we here? I 
like the ship; I like the voyage; I like my 
company, and am content.” 

As he spoke he put something into his mouth, 
and drawing a white substance from his pocket, 
offered it to his neighbor, saying, “Try a bit 
of this lotus; you will find it very soothing to 


150 


PRUE AND I. 


the nerves, and an infallible remedy for home- 
sickness. * * 

“Gentlemen,*' said M. le Baron Munchausen, 
“I have no fear. The arrangements are well 
made ; the voyage has been perfectly planned, 
and each passenger will discover what he took 
passage to find, in the Hole into which we are 
going, under the auspices of this worthy cap- 
tain. “ 

He ceased, and silence fell upon the ship's 
company. Still on we slept; it seemed a 
weary way. The tireless pedestrians still 
paced to and fro, and the idle smokers puffed. 
The ship sailed on, and endless music and 
odor chased each other through the misty air. 
Suddenly a deep sigh drew universal atten- 
tion to a person who had not yet spoken. He 
held a broken harp in his hand, the strings 
fluttered loosely in the air, and the head of the 
speaker bound with a withered wreath of 
laurels, bent over it. 

“No, no,'' said he, “I will not eat your lotus, 
nor sail into the Hole. No magic root can 
cure the homesickness I feel ; for it is no re- 
gretful remembrance, but an immortal long- 
ing. I have roamed farther than I thought 
the earth extended. I have climbed moun- 
tains; I have threaded rivers; I have sailed 
seas; but nowhere have I seen the home for 
which my heart aches. Ah! my friends, you 
look very weary: let us go home." 

The pedestrian paused a moment in his walk, 
and the smokers took their pipes from their 
mouths. The soft air which blew in that 


PRUE AND I. 


151 


moment across the deck, drew a low sound 
from the broken harp strings, and a light 
shone in the eyes of the old man of the figure- 
head, as if the mist had lifted for an instant, 
and he had caught a glimpse of the lost At- 
lantis. 

“I really believe that is where I wish to go,*’ 
said the seeker of the fountain of youth. “I 
think I would give up drinking at the fountain 
if I could get there. I do not know,” he mur- 
mured, doubtfully; “it is not sure; I mean, 
perhaps, I should not have strength to get to 
the fountain, even if I were near it.” 

“But is it possible to get home?” inquired 
the pale young man. “I think I should be 
resigned if I could get home.” 

“Certainly,” said the dry, hard voice of 
Prester John’s confessor, as his cowl fell a 
little back, and a sudden flush burned upon his 
gaunt face; “if there is any chance of home, 
I will give up the bishop’s palace in Central 
Africa.” 

“But Eldorado is my home,” interposed 
the old Alchemist. 

“Or is home Eldorado?” asked the poet, 
with the withered wreath, turning toward the 
Alchemist. 

It was a strange company and a wondrous 
voyage. Here were all kinds of men, of all 
times and countries, pursuing the wildest 
hopes, the most chimerical desires. One took 
me aside to request that I would not let it be 
known, but that he inferred from certain signs 
we were nearing Utopia. Another whispered 


152 


PRUE AND I. 


gayly in my ear that he thought the water 
was gradually becoming of a ruby color — the 
hue of wine; and he had no doubt we should 
wake in the morning and find ourselves in the 
land of Cockaigne. A third, in great anxiety, 
stated to me that such continuous mists were 
unknown upon the ocean; that they were 
peculiar to rivers, and that, beyond question,, 
we were drifting along some stream, probably 
the Nile, and immediate measures ought to 
be taken that we did not go ashore at the foot 
of the mountains of the moon. Others were 
quite sure that we were in the way of striking 
the great southern continent; and a young 
man, who gave his name as Wilkins, said we 
might be quite at ease, for presently some 
friends of his would come flying over from 
the neighboring islands and tell us all we 
wished. 

Still I smelled the mouldy rigging, and the 
odor of cabbage was strong from the hold. 

0 Prue, what could the ship be, in which 
such fantastic characters were sailing toward 
impossible bournes — characters which in every 
age have ventured all the bright capital of life 
in vague speculations and romantic dreams? 
What could it be but the ship that haunts the 
sea forever, and, with all sails set, drives 
onward before a ceaseless gale, and is not 
hailed, nor ever comes to port? 

1 know the ship is always full ; I know the 
graybeard still watches at the prow for the 
lost Atlantis, and still the Alchemist believes 
that Eldorado is at hand. Upon his aimless 


PRUE AND I. 


153 


quest, the dotard still asks where he is going, 
and the pale youth knows that he shall never 
fly himself. Yet they would gladly renounce 
that wild chase and the drear dreams of years, 
could they find what I have never lost. They 
were ready to follow the poet home, if he would 
have told them where it lay. 

I know where it lies. I breathe the soft air 
of the purple uplands which they shall never 
tread. I hear the sweet music of the voices 
they long for in vain. I am no traveler; my 
only voyage is to the office and home again. 
William and Christopher, John and Charles 
sail to Europe and the South, but I defy their 
romantic distances. When the spring comes 
and the flowers blow, I drift through the year 
belted with summer and with spice. 

With the changing months I keep high car- 
nival in all the zones. I sit at home and walk 
■with Prue, and if the sun that stirs the sap 
quickens also the wish to wander, I remember 
my fellow voyagers on that romantic craft, and 
looking round upon my peaceful room, and 
pressing more closely the arm of Prue, I feel 
that I have reached the port for which they 
hopelessly sailed. And when winds blow 
fiercely and the night storm rages, and the 
though of lost mariners and of perilous voyages 
touches the soft heart of Prue, I hear a voice 
sweeter to my ear than that of the sirens to the 
tempest-tossed sailor: “Thank God! Your 
only cruising is in the Flying Dutchman!*’ 


154 


PRUE AND I. 


FAMILY PORTRAITS. 

“Look here upon this picture, and on this.” 

— Hamlet. 

We have no family pictures, Prue and I, only 
a portrait of my grandmother hangs upon our 
parlor wall. It was taken at least a century 
ago, and represents the venerable lady, whom 
I remember in my childhood in spectacles and 
comely cap, as a young and blooming girl. 

She is sitting upon an old-fashioned sofa, by 
the side of a prim aunt of hers, and with her 
back to the open window. Her costume is 
quaint, but handsome. It consists of a cream- 
colored dress made high in the throat, ruffled 
around the neck, and over the bosom and the 
shoulders. The waist is just under her shoul- 
ders, and the sleeves are tight, tighter than 
any of our coat sleeves, and also ruffled at the 
wrist. Around the plump and rosy neck, 
which I remember as shriveled and sallow, and 
hidden under a decent lace handkerchief, 
hangs, in the picture, a necklace of large 
ebony beads. There are two curls upon the 
forehead, and the rest of the hair flows away 
in ringlets down the neck. 

The hands hold an open book ; the eyes look 
up from it with tranquil sweetness, and, 
through the open window behind, you see a 


PRUE AND 1. 


155 


quiet landscape — a hill, a tree, the glimpse of 
a river, and a few peaceful summer clouds. 

Often in my younger days, when my grand- 
mother sat by the fire after dinner, lost in 
thought — perhaps remembering the time 
when the picture was really a portrait — I have 
curiously compared her wasted face with the 
blooming beauty of the girl, and tried to detect 
a likeness. It was strange how the resem- 
blance would sometimes start out; how, as I 
gazed and gazed upon her old face, age disap- 
peared before my eager glance, as snow melts 
in the sunshine, revealing the flowers of a for- 
gotten spring. 

It was touching to see my grandmother steal 
quietly up to her portrait, on still summer 
mornings when every one had left the house — 
and I, the only child, played, disregarded and 
look at it wistfully and long. 

She held her hand over her eyes to shade 
them from the light that streamed in at the 
window, and I have seen her stand at least a 
quarter of an hour gazing steadfastly at the 
picture. She said nothing, she made no 
motion, she shed no tear, but when she turned 
away there was always a pensive sweetness in 
her face that made it not less lovely than the 
face of her youth. 

I have learned since, what her thoughts must 
have been — how that long, wistful glance 
annihilated time and space, how forms and 
faces unknown to any other, rose in sudden 
resurrection around her — how she loved, suf- 
fered, struggled and conquered again; how 


1^6 


PRUE AND I. 


many a jest that I shall never hear, how many 
a game that I shall never play, how many a 
song that I shall never sing, were all renewed 
and remembered as my grandmother contem- 
plated her picture. 

I often stand, as she stood, gazing earnestly 
at the picture, so long and so silently, that 
Prue looks up from her work and says she shall 
be jealous of that beautiful belle, my grand- 
mother, who yet makes her think more kindly 
of those remote old times. 

“Yes, Prue, and that is the charm of a fam- 
ily portrait. “ 

“Yes, again; but,*' says Titbottom when he 
hears the remark, “how if one’s grandmother 
were a shrew, a termagant, a virago?” 

“Ah! in that case — ” I am compelled to say, 
while Prue looks up again, half archly, and I 
add gravely — “you, for instance, Prue.” 

Then Titbottom smiles one of his sad smiles, 
and we change the subject. 

Yet, I am always glad when Minim Sculpin, 
our neighbor, who knows that my opportun- 
ities are few, comes to ask me to step round 
and see the family portraits. 

The Sculpins, I think, are a very old family. 
Titbottom says they date from the deluge. But 
I thought people of English descent preferred 
to stop with William the Conqueror, who came 
from France. 

Before going with Minim, I always fortify 
myself with a glance at the great family Bible, 
in which Adam, Eve, and the partriarchs, are 
indifferently well represented. 


PRUE AND I. 


157 


^ ‘Those are the ancestors of the Howards, 
the Plantagenets, and the Montmorencies, 
says Prue, surprising me with her erudi- 
tion. 

^ “Have you any remoter ancestry, Mr. Scul- 
pin?” asks Minim, who only smiles compas- 
sionately upon the dear woman, while I am 
buttoning my coat. 

Then we step along the street, and I am 
conscious of trembling a little, for I feel as if 
I were going to court. Suddenly we are 
standing before the range of portraits. 

“This,'' says Minim, with unction, “is Sir 
Solomon Sculpin, the founder of the family." 

“Famous for what?" I ask respectfully. 

“For founding the family," replies Minim 
gravely, and I have sometimes thought a little 
severely. 

“This," he says, pointing to a dame in 
hoops and diamond stomacher, “this is Lady 
Sheba Sculpin." 

“Ah! yes. Famous for what?" I inquire. 

“For being the wife of Sir Solomon." 

Then, in order, comes a gentleman in a huge 
curling wig, looking indifferently like James 
the Second, or Louis the Fourteenth, and hold- 
ing a scroll in his hand. 

“The Right Honorable Haddock Sculpin, 
Lord Privy Seal, etc., etc." 

A delicate beauty hangs between, a face 
fair, and loved, and lost centuries ago — a song 
to the eye — a poem to the heart — the Aurelia 
of that old society. 

“Lady Dorothea Sculpin, who married young 


158 


PRUE AND I. 


Lord Pop and Cock, and died prematurely in 
Italy. 

Poor Lady Dorothea! whose great-grand- 
child, in the tenth remove, died last week, an 
old man of eighty. 

Next the gentle lady hangs a fierce figure, 
flourishing a sword, with an anchor embroid- 
ered on his coat-collar, and thunder and light- 
ning, sinking ships, flames and tornadoes in 
the background. 

“Rear Admiral Sir Shark Sculpin, who fell 
in the great action off Madagascar.’' 

So Minim goes on through the series, brand- 
ishing his ancestors about my head, and incon- 
tinently knocking me into admiration. 

And when we reach the last portrait and our 
own times, what is the natural emotion? Is it 
not to put Minim against the wall, draw off 
at him with my eyes and mind, scan him, and 
consider his life, and determine how much of 
the Right Honorable Haddock’s integrity, and 
the Lady Dorothea’s loveliness, and the 
Admiral Shark’s valor, reappears in the mod- 
ern man? After all this proving and refining, 
ought not the last child of a famous race to b^e 
its flower and epitome? Or, in the case that 
he does not chance to be so, is it not better to 
conceal the family name? 

I am told, however, that in the higher circles 
of society, it is better not to conceal the name, 
however unworthy the man or woman may be 
who bears it. Prue once remonstrated with a 
lady about the marriage of a lovely young girl 
with a cousin of Minim’s; but the only answer 


PRUE AND I. 


159 


she received was, “Well, he may not be a per- 
fect man, but then he is a Sculpin/’ which 
consideration apparently gave great comfort to 
the lady’s mind. 

But even Prue grants that Minim has some 
reason for his pride. Sir Solomon was a 
respectable man, and Sir Shark a brave one ; 
and the Right Honorable Haddock a learned 
one ; the Lady Sheba was grave and gracious 
in her way; and the smile of the fair Dorothea 
lights with soft sunlight those long-gone sum- 
mers. The filial blood rushes more gladly 
from Minim’s heart as he gazes; and admira- 
tion for the virtues of his kindred inspires and 
sweetly mingles with good resolutions of his 
own. 

Time has its share, too, in the ministry, and 
the influence. The hills beyond the river lay 
yesterday, at sunset, lost in purple gloom ; they 
receded into airy distances of dreams and 
faery; they sank softly into night, the 
peaks of the delectable mountains. But I 
knew, as I gazed enchanted, that the hills, so 
purple-soft of seeming, were hard, and gray, 
and barren in the wintry twilight; and that 
in the distance was the magic that made them 
fair. 

So beyond the river of time that flows 
between, walk the brave men and the beautiful 
women of our ancestry, grouped in twilight 
upon the shore. Distance smooths away 
defects, and, with gentle darkness, rounds every 
form into grace. It steals the harshness from 
their speech, and every word becomes a song. 


160 


PRUE AND I. 


Far across the gulf that ever widens, they look 
upon us with eyes whose glance is tender, and 
which light us to success. We acknowledge 
our inheritance ; we accept our birthright ; we 
own that their careers have pledged us to noble 
action. Every great life is an incentive to all 
other lives; but when the brave heart, that 
beats for the world, loves us with the warmth 
of private affection, then the example of hero- 
ism is more persuasive, because more personal. 

This is the true pride of ancestry. It is 
founded in the tenderness with which the child 
regards the father, and in the romance that 
time sheds upon history. 

“Where be all the bad people buried?” asks 
every man, with Charles Lamb, as he strolls 
among the rank graveyard grass, and brushes 
it aside to read of the faithful husband, and the 
loving wife, and the dutiful child. 

He finds only praise in the epitaphs, because 
the human heart is kind ; because it yearns 
with wistful tenderness after all its brethren 
who have passed into the cloud, and will only 
speak well of the departed. No offense is 
longer an offense when the grass is green over 
the offender. Even faults then seem character- 
istic and individual. Even Justice is appeased 
when the drop falls. How the old stories and 
plays teem with the incident of the duel in 
which one gentleman falls, and, in dying, for- 
gives and is forgiven. We turn the page with 
a tear. How much better had there been no 
offense, but how well that death wipes it out. 

It is not observed in history that families 


PRUE AND I. 


161 


improve with time. It is rather discovered 
that the whole matter is like a comet, of which 
the brightest part is the head; and the tail, 
although long and luminous is gradually shaded 
into obscurity. 

Yet, by a singular compensation, the pride 
of ancestry increases in the ratio of distance. 
Adam was valiant, and did so well at Poictiers 
that he was knighted — a hearty, homely coun- 
try gentleman, who lived humbly to the end. 
But young Lucifer, his representative in the 
twentieth remove, has a tinder-like conceit 
because old Sir Adam was so brave and humble. 
Sir Adam’s sword is hung up at home, and 
Lucifer has a box at the opera. On a thin 
finger he has a ring, cut with a match fizzling, 
the crest of the Lucifers. But if he should be 
at a Poictiers, he would run away. Then his- 
tory would be sorry — not only for his coward- 
ice but for the shame it brings upon old Adam’s 
name. 

So, if Minim Sculpin is a bad young man, he 
not only shames himself, but he disgraces that 
illustrious line of ancestors, whose characters 
are known. His neighbor, Mudge, has no 
pedigree of this kind, and when he reels home- 
ward, we do not suffer the sorrow of any fair 
Lady Dorothea in such a descendant — we pity 
him for himself alone. But genius and power 
are so imperial and universal, that when Minim 
Sculpin falls, we are grieved not only for him, 
but for that eternal truth and beauty which 
appeared in the valor of Sir Shark, and the 
loveliness of Lady Dorothea. His neighbor 

11 Proe and I 


162 


PRUE AND I. 


Mudge’s grandfather may have been quite as 
valorous and virtuous as Scul pin’s; but we 
know of the one, and we do not know of the 
other. 

Therefore, Prue, I say to my wife, who has, 
by this time, fallen as soundly asleep as if I 
had been preaching a real sermon, do not let 
Mrs. Mudge feel hurt, because I gaze so long 
and earnestly opon the portrait of the fair 
Lady Sculpin, and, lost in dreams, mingle in a 
society which distance and poetry immortalize. 

But let the love of the family portraits 
belong to poetry and not to politics. It is good 
in the one way, and bad in the other. 

The sentiment of ancestral pride is an inte- 
gral part of human nature. Its organization 
in institutions is the real object of enmity to 
all sensible men, because it is a direct prefer- 
ence of derived to original power, implying a 
doubt that the world at every period is able to. 
take care of itself. 

The family portraits have a poetic signifi- 
cance ; but he is a brave child of the family 
who dares to show them. They all sit in pas- 
sionless and austere judgment upon himself. 
Let him not invite us to see them, until he has 
considered whether they are honored or dis- 
graced by his own career — until he has looked 
in the glass of his own thought and scanned 
his own proportions. 

The family portraits are like a woman's dia- 
monds; they may flash finely enough before 
the world, but she herself trembles lest their 
luster eclipse her eyes. It is difficult to resist 


PRUE AND I. 


163 


the tendency to depend upon those portraits, 
and to enjoy vicariously through them a high 
consideration. But, after all, what girl is com- 
plimented when you curiously regard her 
because her mother was beautiful? What 
attenuated consumptive, in whom self-respect 
is yet unconsumed, delights in your respect for 
him, founded in honor for his stalwart an- 
cestor? 

No man worthy of the name rejoices in any 
homage which his own efforts and character 
have not deserved. You intrinsically insult 
him when you make him the scapegoat of your 
admiration for his ancestor. But when his 
ancestor is his accessory, then your homage 
would flatter Jupiter. All that Minim Sculpin 
does by his own talent is the more radiantly set 
and ornamented by the family fame. The 
imagination is pleased when Lord John Rus- 
sell is Premier of England and a whig, because 
the great Lord William Russell, his ancestor, 
died in England for liberty. 

In the same way Minim’s sister Sara adds to 
her own grace the sweet memory of the Lady 
Dorothea. When she glides, a sunbeam, 
through that quiet house, and in winter makes 
summer by her presence ; when she sits at the 
piano, singing in the twilight, or stands lean- 
ing against the Venus in the corner of the room 
— ^herself more graceful — then, in glancing 
from her to the portrait of the gentle Dorothea, 
you feel that the long years between them 
have been lighted by the same sparkling grace, 
and shadowed by the same pensive smile — for 


164 


PRUE AND I. 


this is but one Sara and one Dorothea, out of 
all that there are in the world. 

As we look at these two we must own that 
noblesse oblige in a sense sweeter than we 
knew, and be ^lad when young Sculpin invites 
us to see the family portraits. Could a man 
be named Sidney, and not be a better man, or 
Milton, and be a churl? 

But it is apart from any historical association 
that I like to look at the family portraits. The 
Sculpins were very distinguished heroes, and 
judges, and founders of families; but I chiefly 
linger upon their pictures, because they were 
men and women. Their portraits remove the 
vagueness from history, and give it reality. 
Ancient valor and beauty cease to be names 
and poetic myths, and become facts. I feel 
that they lived, and loved, and suffered in 
those old days. The story of their lives is 
instantly full of human sympathy in my mind, 
and I judge them more gently, more gener- 
ously. 

Then I look at those of us who are the spec- 
tators of the portraits. I know that we are 
made of the same flesh and blood, that time is 
preparing us to be placed in his cabinet and 
upon canvas, to be curiously studied by the 
grandchildren of unborn Prues. I put out my 
hands to grasp those of my fellows around the 
pictures. 

“Ah! friends, we live not only for our- 
selves. Those whom we shall never see, 
will look to us as models, as counselors. We 
shall be speechless then. We shall only look 


PRUE AND I. 


165 


at them from the canvas, and cheer or discour- 
age them by their idea of our lives and our- 
selves. Let us so look in the portrait, that they 
shall love our memories — that they shall say 
in turn, ‘they were kind and thoughtful, those 
queer old ancestors of ours; let us not disgrace 
them.’’’ 

If they only recognize us as men and women 
like themselves, they will be the better for it, 
and the family portraits will be family bless- 
ings. 

This is what my grandmother did. She 
looked at her own portrait, at the portrait of 
her youth, with much the same feeling that I 
remember Prue as she was when I first saw her ; 
with much the same feeling that I hope our 
grandchildren will remember us. 

Upon those still summer mornings, though 
she stood withered and wan in a plain black 
silk gown, a close cap, and spectacles, and held 
her shrunken and blue-veined hand to shield 
her eyes, yet, as she gazed with that long and 
longing glance, upon the blooming beauty 
that had faded from her form forever, she 
recognized under that flowing hair and that 
rosy cheek — the immortal fashions of youth and 
health — and beneath those many ruffles and that 
quaint high waist, the fashions of the day — the 
same true and loving woman. If her face was 
pensive as she turned away it was because 
truth and love are in their essence, forever 
young, and it is the hard condition of nature 
that they cannot always appear so. 

12 Prue and I 


166 


PRUE AND I. 


OUR COUSIN THE CURATE. 

“Why, let the stricken deer go weep, 

The heart ungalled play ; 

For some must watch while some must sleep; 

Thus runs the world away.” 

Prue and I have very few relations: Prue, 
especially, says that she never had any but her 
parents, and that she has none now but her 
children. She often wishes she had some large 
aunt in the country, who might come in unex- 
pectedly with bags and bundles, and encamp 
in our little house for a whole winter. 

“Because you are tired of me, I suppose, 
Mrs. Prue?“ I reply with dignity, when she 
alludes to the imaginary large aunt. 

“You could take aunt to the opera, you 
know, and walk with her on Sundays,'* says 
Prue, as she knits and calmly looks me in the 
face, without recognizing my observation. 

Then I tell Prue in the plainest possible 
manner that if her large aunt should come up 
from the country to pass the winter, I should 
insist upon her bringing her oldest daughter, 
with whom I would flirt so desperately that the 
street would be scandalized, and even the cor- 
ner grocery should gossip over the iniquity. 

“Poor Prue, how I should pity you," I say 
triumphantly to my wife. 


PRUE AND I. 


16T 


“Poor oldest daughter, how I should pity 
her,“ replies Prue, placidly counting her 
stitches. 

So the happy evening passes, as we gayly 
mock each other, and wonder how old the 
large aunt should be, and how many bundles 
she ought to bring with her. 

“I would have her arrive by the late train at 
midnight,” says Prue; “and when she had 
eaten some supper and had gone to her room, 
she should discover that she had left the most 
precious bundle of all in the cars, without 
whose contents she could not sleep, nor dress, 
and you would start to hunt for it. ” 

And the needle clicks faster than ever. 

“Yes, and when I am gone to the office in 
the morning, and am busy about important 
affairs — yes, Mrs. Prue, important affairs,” I 
insist, as my wife half-raises her head incredu- 
lously — “then our large aunt from the coun- 
try would like to go shopping, and would want 
you for her escort. And she would cheapen 
tape at all the shops, and even to the great 
Stewart himself, she woiild offer a shilling less 
for the gloves. Then the comely clerks of the 
great Stewart would look at you, with their 
brows lifted, as if they said, Mrs. Prue, your 
large aunt had better stay in the country.” 

And the needle clicks more slowly, as if the 
tune were changing. 

The large aunt will never come, I know ; nor 
shall I ever flirt with the oldest daughter. I 
should like to believe that our little house will 
teem with aunts and cousins when Prue and I 


168 


PRUE AND I. 


are gone ; but how can I believe it, when there 
is a milliner within three doors and a hair- 
dresser combs his wigs in the late dining-room 
of my opposite neighbor? The large aunt from 
the country is entirely impossible, and as Prue 
feels it, and I feel it, the needles seem to click 
a dirge for that late lamented lady. 

“But at least we have one relative, Prue.*’ 

The needles stop ; only the clock ticks upon 
the mantle to remind us how ceaselessly the 
stream of time flows on that bears us away 
from our cousin the curate. 

When Prue and I are most cheerful, and the 
world looks fair — we talk of our cousin the 
curate. When the world seems a little cloudy, 
and we remember that though we have lived 
and loved together, we may not die together — 
we talk of our cousin the curate. When we 
plan little plans for the boys and dream dreams 
for the girls — we talk of our cousin the curate. 
When I tell Prue of Aurelia, whose character 
is every day lovelier — we talk of our cousin the 
curate. There is no subject which does not 
seem to lead naturally to our cousin the curate. 
As the soft air steals in and envelopes every- 
thing in the world, so that the trees, and the 
hills, and the rivers, the cities, the crops, and 
the sea are made remote, and delicate, and 
beautiful, by its pure baptism, so over all the 
events of our little lives, comforting, refining, 
and elevating, falls like a benediction the 
remembrance of our cousin the curate. 

He was my only early companion. He had 
no brother, I had none; and we became broth- 


PRUE AND I. 


169 


ers to each other. He was always beautiful. 
His face was symmetrical and delicate; his 
figure was slight and graceful. He looked as 
the sons of kings out to look: as I am sure 
Philip Sidney looked when he was a boy. Plis 
eyes were blue, and as you looked at them, 
they seemed to let your gaze out into a June 
heaven. The blood ran close to the skin, and 
his complexion had the rich transparency of 
light. There was nothing gross or heavy in 
his expression or texture ; his soul seemed to 
have mastered his body. But he had strong 
passions, for his delicacy was positive, not 
negative; it was not weakness, but intensity. 

There was a patch of ground about the house 
which we tilled as a garden. I was proud of 
my morning-glories, and sweet peas; my cou- 
sin cultivated roses. One day — and we could 
scarcely have been more than six years old — 
we were digging merrily and talking. Sud- 
denly there was some kind of difference; I 
taunted him,and rising his spade he struck me 
upon the leg. The blow was heavy for a boy, 
and the blood trickled from the wound. I 
burst into indignant tears, and limped toward 
the house. My cousin turned pale and said 
nothing, but just as I opened the door, he 
darted by m,e, and before I could interrupt him, 
he had confessed his crime, and asked for pun- 
ishment. 

From that day he conquered himself. He 
devoted a kind of ascetic energy to subduing 
his own will, and I remember no other out- 
break. But the penalty he paid for conquering 


170 


PRUE AND I. 


his will was a loss of the gushing expression 
of feeling. My cousin became perfectly gentle 
in his manner, but there was a want of that 
pungent excess, which is the finest flavor of 
character. His views were moderate and calm. 
He was swept away by no boyish extrava- 
gance, and, even while I wished he would sin 
only a very little, I still adored him as a saint. 
The truth is, as I tell Prue, I am so very bad 
because I have to sin for two — for myself and 
our cousin the curate. Often, when I returned 
panting and restless from some frolic, which 
had wasted almost all the night, I was 
rebuked as I entered the room in which he lay 
peacefull}^ sleeping. There was something 
holy in the profound repose of his beauty, and, 
as I stood looking at him, how many a time the 
tears have dropped from my hot eyes upon his 
face, while I vowed to make myself worthy of 
such a companion, for I felt my heart owning 
its allegiance to that strong and imperial 
nature. 

My cousin was loved by the boys, but the 
girls worshiped him. His mind, large in 
grasp, and subtle in perception, naturally com- 
manded his companions, while the luster of his 
character allured those who could not under- 
stand him. The asceticism occasionally showed 
itself a vein of hardness, or rather of severity 
in his treatment of others. He did what he 
thought it his duty to do, but he forgot that 
few could see the right so clearly as he, and 
very few of those few could so calmly obey 
the least command of conscience. I confess I 


PRUE AND I. 


171 


was a little afraid of him, for I think I never 
could be severe. 

In the long winter evenings I often read to 
Prue the story of some old father of the 
church, or some quaint poem of George Her- 
bert’s — and every Christmas eve, I read to her 
Milton’s “Hymn of the Nativity.” Yet, when 
the saint seems to us most saintly, or the 
poem most pathetic or sublime, we find our- 
selves talking of our cousin the curate. I have 
not seen him for many years; but, when we 
parted, his head had the intellectual symmetry 
of Milton’s, without the puritanic stoop, and 
with the stately grace of a cavalier. 

Such a boy has premature wisdom — he lives 
and suffers prematurely. 

Prue loves to listen when I speak of the 
romance of his life, and I do not wonder. P'or 
my part, I find in the best romance only the 
story of my love for her, and often as I read 
to her, whenever I come to what Titbottom 
calls “the crying part,” if I lift my eyes sud- 
denly, I see that Prue’s eyes are fixed on me 
with a softer light by reason of their moisture. 

Our cousin the curate loved, while he was 
yet a boy, Flora, of the sparkling eyes and the 
ringing voice. His devotion was absolute. 
Flora was flattered, because all the girls, as I 
said, worshiped him ; but she was a gay, glanc- 
ing girl, who had invaded the student’s heart 
with her audacious brilliancy, and was half- 
surprised that she had subdued it. Our cousin 
— for I never think of him as ray cousin, only 
— wasted away under the fervor of his passion. 


172 


PRUE AND I. 


His life exhaled as incense before her. He 
wrote poems to her, and sang them under her 
window, in the summer moonlight. He 
brought her flowers and precious gifts. When 
he had nothing else to give, he gave her his 
love in a homage so eloquent and beautiful 
that the worship was like the worship of the 
Wise Men. The gay Flora was proud and 
superb. She was a girl, and the bravest and 
best boy loved her. She was young, and the 
wisest and truest youth loved her. They lived 
together, we all lived together, in the happy 
valley of childhood. We looked forward to 
manhood as island poets look across the sea, 
believing that the whole world beyond is a 
blest Araby of spices. 

The months went by, and the young love 
continued. Our cousin and Flora were only 
children still, and there was no engagement. 
The elders looked upon the intimacy as natural 
and mutually beneficial. It would help soften 
the boy and strengthen the girl; and they took 
for granted that softness and strength were 
precisely what were wanted. It is a great pity 
that men and women forget that they have been 
children. Parents are apt to be foreigners to 
their sons and daughters. Maturity is the 
gate of Paradise, which shuts behind us ; and 
our memories are gradually weaned from the 
glories in which our nativity was cradled. 

The months went by, the children grew 
older, and they constantly loved. Now Prue 
always smiles at one of my theories; she is 
entirely skeptical of it ; but it is, nevertheless. 


PRUE AND I. 


173 


my opinion that men love most passionately, 
and women most permanently. Men love at 
first and most warmly; women love last and 
longest. This is natural enough ; for nature 
makes women to be won, and men to win. 
Men are the active, positive force, and there- 
fore, they are more ardent and demonstrative. 

I can never get further than that in my phi- 
losophy, when Prue looks at me, and smiles me 
into skepticism of my own doctrines. But 
they are true, notwithstanding. 

My day is rather past for such speculations ; 
but so long as Aurelia is unmarried, I am sure 
I shall indulge myself in them. I have never 
made much progress in the philosophy of love ; 
in fact, I can only be sure of this one cardinal 
principle, that when you are quite sure two 
people cannot be in love with each other, be- 
cause there is no earthly reason why they 
should be, then you may be very confident that 
you are wrong, and that they are in love, for 
the secret of love is past finding out. Why our 
cousin should have loved the gay Flora so 
ardently was hard to say ; but that he did so, 
was not difficult to see. 

He went away to college. He wrote the 
most eloquent and passionate letters ; and when 
he returned in vacations, he had no eyes, ears, 
nor heart for any other being. I rarely saw 
him, for I was living away from our early 
home, and was busy in a store — learning to be 
bookkeeper — but I heard afterward from him- 
self the whole story. 

One day when he came home for the holi- 


174 


PRUE AND I. 


days, he found a young foreigner with Flora — 
a handsome youth, brilliant and graceful. I 
have asked Prue a thousand times why women 
adore soldiers and foreigners. She says it is 
because they love heroism and are romantic. 
A soldier is professionally a hero, says Prue, 
and a foreigner is associated with all unknown 
and beautiful regions. I hope there is no 
worse reason. But if it be the distance which 
is romantic, then by her own rule, the moun- 
tain which looked to you so lovely when you 
saw it upon the horizon, when you stand upon 
its rocky and barren side, has transmitted its 
romance to its remotest neighbor. I cannot 
but admire the fancies of girls which make 
them poets. They have only to look upon a 
dull -eyed, ignorant, exhausted roue, with an 
impudent mustache, and they surrender to 
Italy, to the tropics, to the splendors of nobil- 
ity, and a court life — and — 

“Stop,’* says Prue gently; “you have no 
right to say ‘girls’ do so, because some poor 
victims have been deluded. Would Aurelia 
surrender to a blear-eyed foreigner in a mus- 
tache?” 

Prue has such a reasonable way of putting 
these things! 

Our cousin came home and found Flora and 
the young foreigner conversing. The young 
foreigner had large, soft, black eyes, and the 
dusky skin of the tropics. Flis manner was 
languid and fascinating, courteous and re- 
served. It assumed a natural supremacy, and 
you felt as if here were a young prince travel- 


PRUE AND I. 


175 


ing before he came into possession of his 
realm. 

It is an old fable that love is blind. But I 
think there are no eyes so sharp as those of 
lovers. I am sure there is not a shade upon 
Prue’s brow that I do not instantly remark, 
nor an altered tone in her voice that I do not 
instantly observe. Do you suppose Aurelia 
would not note the slightest deviation of heart 
in her lover, if she had one? Love is the cold- 
est of critics. To be in love is to live in a cri- 
sis, and the very imminence of uncertainty 
makes the lover perfectly self-possessed. His 
eye constantly scours the horizon. There is 
no footfall so light that it does not thunder in 
his ear. Love is tortured by the tempest the 
moment the cloud of a hand’s size rises out of 
the sea. It foretells its own doom ; its agony 
is past before its sufferings are known. 

Our cousin the curate no sooner saw the trop- 
ical stranger, and marked his impression upon 
Flora, than he felt the end. As the shaft 
struck his heart, his smile was sweeter, and his 
homage even more poetic and reverential. I 
doubt if Flora understood him or herself. She 
did not know, what he instinctively perceived, 
that she loved him less. But there are no de- 
grees in love ; when it is less than absolute and 
supreme, it is nothing. Our cousin and Flora 
were not formally engaged but their betrothal 
was understood by all of us as a thing of 
course. He did not allude to the stranger; 
but as day followed day, he saw with every 
nerve all that passed. Gradually — so gradually 


176 


PRUE AND I. 


that she scarcely noticed it — our cousin left 
Flora more and more with the soft-eyed 
stranger, whom he saw she preferred. His 
treatment of her was so full of tact, he still 
walked and talked with her so familiarly, that 
she was not troubled by any fear that he saw 
what she hardly saw herself. Therefore, she 
was not obliged to conceal anything from him 
or from herself ; but all the soft currents of 
her heart were setting toward the West Indian. 
Our cousin's cheek grew paler, and his soul 
burned and wasted within him. His whole 
future — all his dream of life — had been founded 
upon his love. It was a stately palace built 
upon the sand, and now the sand was sliding 
away. I have read somewhere, that love will 
sacrifice everything but itself. But our cousin 
sacrificed his love to the happiness of his mis- 
tress. He ceased to treat her as peculiarly his 
own. He made no claim in word or manner 
that everybody might not have made. He 
did not refrain from seeing her, or speaking of 
her as of all his other friends; and, at length, 
although no one could say how or v/hen the 
change had been made, it was evident and un- 
derstood that he was no more her lover but 
that both were the best of friends. 

He still wrote to her occasionally froih col- 
lege, and his letters were those of a friend, not 
of a lover. He could not reproach her. I do 
not believe any man is secretly surprised that 
a woman ceases to love him. Her love is a 
heavenly favor won by no desert of his. If it 


PRUE AND I. 


177 


passes, he can no more complain than a flower 
when the sunshine leaves it. 

Before our cousin left college, Flora was 
married to the tropical stranger. It was the 
brightest of June days, and the summer smiled 
upon the bride. There were roses in her hand 
and orange flowers in her hair, and the village 
church bell rang out over the peaceful fields. 
The warm sunshine lay upon the landscape 
like God’s blessing, and Prue and I, not yet 
married ourselves, stood at an open window in 
the old meeting-house, hand in hand, while 
the young couple spoke their vows. Prue says 
that brides are always beautiful, and I, who 
remember Prue herself upon her wedding day 
— how can I deny it? Truly, the gay Flora 
was lovely that summer morning, and the 
throng was happy in the old church. But it 
was very sad to me, although I only suspected 
then what now I know. I shed no tears at my 
own wedding, but I did at Flora’s, although I 
knew she was marrying a soft-eyed youth 
whom she dearly loved, and who, I doubt not, 
dearly loved her. 

Among the group of her nearest friends was 
our cousin the curate. When the ceremony 
was ended, he came to shake her hand with 
the rest His face was calm, and his smile 
sweet, and his manner unconstrained. Flora 
did not blush — why should she? but shook his 
hand warmly, and thanked him for his good 
wishes. Then they all sauntered down the 
aisle together; there were some tears with the 
smiles among the other friends; our cousin 


178 


PRUE AND I. 


handed the bride into her carriage, shook 
hands with the husband, closed the door, and 
Flora drove away. 

I have never seen her since ; I do not even 
know if she be living still. But I shall always 
remember her as she looked that June morning, 
holding roses in her hand, and wreathed with 
orange flowers. Dear Flora! it was no fault of 
hers that she loved one man more than 
another: she could not be blamed for not prefer- 
ring our cousin to the West Indian ; there is no 
fault in the story, it is only a tragedy. 

Our cousin carried all the collegiate honors 
— but without exciting jealousy or envy. He 
was so really the best, that his companions 
were anxious he should have the sign of his 
superiority. He studied hard, he thought 
much, and wrote well. There was no evi- 
dence of any blight upon his ambition or career, 
but after living quietly in the country for some 
time, he went to Europe and traveled. When 
he returned, he resolved to study law, but 
presently relinquished it. Then he collected 
materials for a history, but suffered them to lie 
unused. Somehow the mainspring was gone. 
He used to come and pass weeks with Prue and 
me. His coming made the children happy, for 
he sat with them, and talked and played with 
them all day long, as one of themselves. They 
had no quarrels when our cousin the curate 
was their playmate, and their laugh was hardly 
sweeter than his as it rang down from the 
nursery. Yet sometimes, as Prue was setting 
the tea table, and I sat musing by the fire, she 


PRUE AND I. 


179 


stopped and turned to me as we heard that 
sound, and her eyes filled with tears. 

He was interested in all subjects that inter- 
ested others. His fine perception, his clear 
sense, his noble imagination, illuminated every 
question. His friends wanted him to go into 
political life, to write a great book, to do some- 
thing worthy of his powers. It was the very 
thing he longed to do himself ; but he came 
and played with the children in the nursery, 
and the great deed was undone. Often, in the 
long winter evenings we talked of the past, 
while Titbottom sat silent by, and Prue was 
busily knitting. He told us the incidents of 
his early passion — but he did not moralize 
about it, nor sigh, nor grow moody. He 
turned to Prue, sometimes, and jested gently, 
and often quoted from the old song of George 
Withers, I believe: 

“If she be not fair for me, 

What care I how fair she be?” 

But there was no flippancy in the jesting; I 
thought the sweet humor was no gayer than a 
flower upon a grave. 

I am sure Titbottom loved our cousin the 
curate, for his heart is as hospitable as the sum- 
mer heaven. It was beautiful to watch his 
courtesy toward him, and I do not wonder that 
Prue considers the deputy bookkeeper the 
model of a high bred gentleman. When you 
see his poor clothes, and thin, gray hair, his 
loitering step, and dreamy eye, you might pass 
him by as an inefficient man ; but when you 


180 


PRUE AND I. 


hear his voice always speaking for the noble 
and generous side, or recounting, in a half- 
melancholy chant, the recollections of his 
youth; when you know that his heart beats 
with the simple emotion of a boy’s heart, and 
that his courtesy is as delicate as a girl’s mod- 
esty, you will understand why Prue declares 
that she has never seen but one man who re- 
minded her of our especial favorite. Sir Philip 
Sidney, and that his name is Titbottom. 

At length, our cousin went abroad again to 
Europe. It was many years ago that we 
watched him sail away, and when Titbottom, 
and Prue, and I went home to dinner, the 
grace that was said that day was a fervent 
prayer for our cousin the curate. Many an 
evening afterward the children wanted him, 
and cried themselves to sleep calling upon his 
name. Many an evening still, our talk flags 
into silence as we sit before the fire, and Prue 
puts down her knitting and takes my hand, as 
if she knew my thoughts, although we do not 
name his name. 

He wrote us letters as he wandered about 
the world. They were affectionate letters, full 
of observation, and thought, and description. 
He lingered longest in Italy, but he said his 
conscience accused him of yielding to the 
sirens ; and he declared that his life was run- 
ning uselessly away. At last he came to Eng- 
land. He was charmed with everything, and 
the climate was even kinder to him than that 
of Italy. He went to all the famous places,, 
and saw many of the famous Englishmen, and 


PRUE AND I. 


181 


wrote that he felt England to he his home. 
Burying himself in the ancient gloom of a uni- 
versity town, although past the prime of life, 
he studied like an ambitious boy. He said 
again that his life had been wine poured upon 
the ground, and he felt guilty. And so our 
cousin became a curate. 

“Surely,'* wrote he, “you and Prue will be 
glad to hear it ; and my friend Titbottom can 
no longer boast that he is more useful in the 
world than I. Dear old George Herbert has 
already said what I would say to you, and here 
it is: 

“ ‘I made a posy, while the day ran by; 

Here will I smell my remnant out, and tie 
My life within this band. 

But time did beckon to the flowers, and they 
My noon most cunningly did steal away, 

And wither’d in my hand. 

‘My hand was next to them, and then my heart; 

1 took, without more thinking, in good part. 

Time’s gentle admonition ; 

Which did so sweetly death’s sad taste convey. 
Making my mind to smell my fatal day. 

Yet sugaring the suspicion. 

“ ‘Farewell, dear flowers, sweetly your time ye spent, 
Fit, while ye lived, for smell or ornament. 

And after death for cures; 

I follow straight without complaints or grief, 

Since if my scent be good, I care not if 
It be as short as yours. ’ ’ ’ 

This is our only relation ; and do you wonder 
that, whether our days are dark or bright, we 
naturally speak of our cousin the curate? 
There is no nursery longer, for the children 


182 


PRUE AND 1. 


are grown ; but I have seen Prue stand, with 
her hand holding the door, for an hour, and 
looking into the room now so sadly still and 
tidy, with a sweet solemnity in her eyes that I 
will call holy. Our children have forgotten 
their old playmate, but I am sure if there be 
any children in his parish, over the sea, they 
love our cousin the curate, and watch eagerly 
for his coming. Does his step falter now, I 
wonder; is that long, fair hair, gray; is that 
laugh as musical in those distant homes as it 
used to be in our nursery; has England, 
among all her good and great men, any man 
so noble as our cousin the curate? 

The great book is unwritten ; the great deeds 
are undone ; in no biographical dictionary will 
you find the name of our cousin the curate. Is 
his life, therefore, lost? Have his powers been 
wasted? 

I do not dare to say it ; for I see Bourne, on 
the pinnacle of prosperity, but still looking 
sadly for his castle in Spain ; I see Titbottom, 
an old deputy bookkeeper, whom nobody 
knows, but with his chivalric heart, loyal to 
whatever is generous and humane, full of 
sweet hope, and faith, and devotion ; I see the 
superb Aurelia, so lovely that the Indians 
would call her a smile of the Great Spirit, and 
as beneficent as a saint of the calendar — how 
shall I say what is lost, or what is won? I 
know that in every way, and by all his crea- 
tures, God is served and his purposes accom- 
plished. How should I explain or understand, 


PRUE AND I. 


183 


I, who am only an old bookkeeper, in a white 
cravat? 

Yet in all history, in the splendid triumphs 
of emperors and kings, in the dreams of poets, 
the speculations of philosophers, the sacrifices 
of heroes, and the ecstasies of saints, I find no 
exclusive secret of success. Prue says she 
knows that nobody ever did more good than our 
cousin the curate, for every smile and word of 
his is a good deed; and I, for my part, am sure 
that, although many must do more good in the 
world, nobody enjoys it more than Prue and I. 


THE END. 


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159. Wide, Wide World ....Warner 

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